What causes green efficiency losses in Chinese agriculture? A perspective based on input redundancy

Abstract

Incompatibility between agricultural production inputs and the resource environment leads to efficiency losses and has an impeding effect on sustainable agricultural development. However, efficiency loss in agriculture is a blind spot in current research. To explore the green development performance and efficiency losses in China's agricultural modernization process, this paper measures the green efficiency of China's agriculture from static and dynamic perspectives. An in-depth analysis of efficiency losses in the efficiency measurement process was conducted. It was found that the overall agricultural green efficiency (AGE) of China showed a continuous upward trend from 2006 to 2019 and the average growth rate is 4.1 %. The utilization efficiency of agricultural inputs in China increased significantly, but the regional variations in the redundancy of agricultural inputs widened. Both agricultural modernization and environmental regulations are associated negatively with labor redundancy, and environmental regulations are associated negatively with fertilizer and machinery redundancy. The effective substitution of labor production factors by agricultural modernization can reduce labor redundancy and release a large amount of rural labor engaged in primary agricultural production, and environmental regulations effectively inhibit the waste of fertilizer, labor, and machinery inputs.