Abstract
In the context of China’s food security, spatially explicit information on grain production is an important asset to achieve the sustainable management of cultivated land. Previous studies have shown that spatial mismatches exist between grain production and water and cultivated land resources. In this paper, county-level data are used to investigate the degree of spatial (mis)match between grain output and the geographical distribution patterns of plain, hill, and mountain counties. We estimate the difference in grain output between these different types of counties with a Spatial Autoregression Model. The results indicate that plain counties have the highest grain output, followed by hill counties and mountain counties subsequently. The reasons for the higher production in plain counties lie in the presence of more cultivated land, as well as a higher degree of irrigation and agricultural mechanization. The current pattern of Chinese total grain production follows the law of substituting labor with mechanization. Improving efficiency in the use of water resources and chemical fertilizer is both urgent and crucial. In this paper, we propose that the future roles for total grain production in relation to landforms should be: increased production and competitiveness in plain counties, a stabilization of capacity in hill counties, and a decrease in grain production in mountain counties.
Highlights
Grain self-sufficiency is one of the most important agricultural policy goals in China
These policies aim at harmonizing grain production and environmental protection in order to achieve the sustainable use of natural resources as a whole
To assess the impact of cultivated land quantity, irrigation, and agricultural mechanization on grain output, we used the following model: n ln Yit = β0 + λ ∑ Wij ln Yij + β1 ln Landit + β2 ln Irriit + β3 ln Powerit + φi + υit j=1 where λ is the spatial auto-regressive parameter, Land is the amount of cultivated land, Irri is the irrigated area, Power is the total power of agricultural machinery, and φi and νit represent the individual effect and error term, respectively
Summary
Grain self-sufficiency is one of the most important agricultural policy goals in China. These policies aim at harmonizing grain production and environmental protection in order to achieve the sustainable use of natural resources as a whole. Some researchers have shown that spatial mismatches exist between grain production and water and cultivated land resources in China [13,14]. Grain production is affected by the abandonment of cultivated land, which has emerged as a prevalent phenomenon in the mountain regions in China [20]. There is an urgent need to conduct research on the spatial pattern of Chinese total grain production from the perspective of landforms (plain, hill, and mountain). We made some suggestions to spatially coordinate total grain production and environmental protection in plain, hill, and mountain counties
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