Impacts of Climate and Environmental Change on Bean Cultivation in China

Sidan Li,Yixuan Liu,Ze Song,Li Zhang,Shibing You

doi:10.3390/atmos12121591

Sidan Li, Yixuan Liu

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos12121591

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Abstract

The impact of human-caused environmental pollution and global climate change on the economy and society can no longer be underestimated. Agriculture is the most directly and vulnerably affected sector by climate change. This study used beans, the food crop with the largest supply and demand gap in China, as the research object and established a panel spatial error model consisting of multiple indicators of four factors: climate environment, economic market, human planting behavior and technical development level of 25 provinces in China from 2005 to 2019 to explore the impact of climate environmental changes on the yields of beans. The study shows that: (1) The increase in precipitation has a significant positive effect on bean yields; however, the increase in temperature year by year has a significant negative effect on bean yields; (2) carbon emissions do not directly affect bean production at present but may have an indirect impact on bean production; (3) artificial irrigation and fertilization behavior on bean production has basically reached saturation, making it difficult to continue to increase bean yields and (4) the development of technology and human activity is a mixed blessing, and the consequent inhibiting effects on bean production are currently unable to offset their promoting effects. Thus, when it comes to bean cultivation, China should focus mainly on the overall impact of environmental changes on its production, rather than technical enhancements such as irrigation and fertilization.

Highlights

In recent decades, the global climate has undergone significant changes due to natural environmental changes and human activities, and this change is mainly characterized by global warming
The result implies that the effect of extreme weather on bean yields is significant, with either lower or higher cumulative temperatures causing a reduction in bean yields, and, combined with the descriptive statistics in Table 2, we can conclude that the warming phenomenon occurring in China significantly and negatively affects bean production
A large number of observations and research results show that climate change has different impacts on crop growth and development, cropping systems and yield quality, with both advantages and disadvantages, but the negative impacts outweigh positive ones

Summary

Introduction

The global climate has undergone significant changes due to natural environmental changes and human activities, and this change is mainly characterized by global warming. Climate warming, precipitation instability, extreme weather and disasters have brought negative impacts on food production [5]. Changes in rainfall patterns and increased temperature could have a marked impact on food production [7]. According to IPCC (2012), crop production is sensitive to climate change associated with temperature increases, changes in rainfall patterns and extreme weather events. In addition to the changes of climate and temperature, carbon dioxide affects the food production, and it has a higher impact on C3 species (including wheat, rice and bean) than C4 species (including maize and sorghum) [8]. In the context of global warming, changes in temperature and precipitation patterns could lead to a 20–36% decline in maize, wheat, and rice yields in China over the 20–80 years [10]. China’s grain production with the background of climate change has the following three main problems: Firstly, grain production becomes more volatile; secondly, the structure and layout of food production may change, and crop cultivation systems need to change and thirdly, climate change will substantially increase the cost of grain production [11]

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