Increase energy use efficiency and economic benefit with reduced environmental footprint in rice production of central China.

Shen Yuan,Xiaoxia Ling,Shaobing Peng,Le Xu,Xuewu Zhan

doi:10.1007/s11356-021-16217-y

Shen Yuan, Xiaoxia Ling + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-16217-y

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Abstract

Identifying an energy-efficient system with low energy use, low global warming potential (GWP), and high profitability is essential for ensuring the sustainability of the agro-environment. Given the global importance of China's rice production, this study determines energy, environmental, and economic performances of transplanted (TPR) and direct-seeded rice system (DSR) in central China. The results showed that total energy inputs for TPR and DSR were 31.5 and 22.8 GJ ha-1 across two growing seasons, respectively. Higher energy input for TPR primarily resulted from extra energy use of the nursery beds and transplanting. Higher energy output of DSR (202.5 GJ ha-1) over that of TPR (187.7 GJ ha-1) was due to a slightly higher yield from DSR. Therefore, DSR exhibited significantly higher energy use efficiency than that of TPR. Lower specific energy for DSR (2.78 MJ kg-1) relative to TPR (4.02 MJ kg-1) indicated that the energy used to produce per unit of rice grain could be reduced by 30.8% by adopting DSR. On average, GWP of DSR was reduced by 5.6% compared with TPR. Moreover, DSR had a 55.8% higher gross return and a 25.7% lower production cost than those of TPR. Overall, compared with TPR, DSR has the potential to increase gross economic return and energy output with reduced energy input and emissions. Therefore, this study suggests that DSR is an environmentally-sound and economically-viable production system. As such, DSR is noted as an energy-efficient and climate-smart production system that could be used by policymakers and farmers to achieve not only improvements in the environment but also financial benefits.

Highlights

The agriculture sector has been extensively shown to face a great challenge in producing sufficient food for growing population under the pressures of decreased cropland area, climate change, and the need to protect environment (Gordon et al 2005; Chen et al 2020)
It showed that the difference in energy use between the two systems was significant during both seasons
Higher energy used under TPR was primarily due to extra energy input for nursery and transplanting, which were reported to be large energy-consuming farm operations (Pathak et al 2013; Chaudhary et al 2017)

Summary

Introduction

The agriculture sector has been extensively shown to face a great challenge in producing sufficient food for growing population under the pressures of decreased cropland area, climate change, and the need to protect environment (Gordon et al 2005; Chen et al 2020). Energy input is critical to agriculture, and it has increased substantially throughout the years in response to growing food demand (Yuan and Peng, 2017a). Intensive energy input in forms of irrigation water, fertilizer, machinery, diesel oil, and pesticides have dramatically increased GHG emissions (Yuan et al 2019), which in turn threaten the sustainability of agriculture by contributing to global warming (Maraseni et al 2015; Chen 2016). Reducing energy expenditure and enhancing energy use efficiency (EUE) are crucial to increasing production and minimizing environmental impact (Mohammadi et al 2014). These concerns are strong for rice production in China

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