Resilience of agricultural development in China's major grain-producing areas under the double security goals of "grain ecology".

The development of agriculture faces uncertainties due to global climate variability and the scarcity of agricultural resources. Enhancing agricultural development resilience is essential for improving agriculture's adaptability to the external environment and ensuring food security. It is imperative to prevent and control agricultural pollution as it worsens. Thus, enhancing the resilience of agricultural development requires balancing food security and ecological security. The present study constructs an evaluation system for agricultural development resilience in China with three levels: resistance, resilience, and reengineering ability. The agricultural development resilience of China's main grain-producing areas is evaluated using the entropy method, and regional differences are analyzed using kernel density estimation and the Theil index. The obstacle model was used to identify and analyze the obstacles that affect agricultural development's resilience to propose countermeasures. The results showed that (1) agricultural development resilience in China's main grain-producing areas has steadily increased from 0.317 to 0.427. The resilience of agrarian development in Heilongjiang, Shandong, and Henan provinces ranges from 0.473 to 0.575, which is far higher than the mean development level; (2) Regional differences in the main grain-producing areas are narrowing from 0.077 to 0.023; (3) The main grain-producing areas share common obstacle factors, emphasizing the critical role of technological innovation, investment, and machine-cultivated land resources in enhancing agricultural resilience against external risks. Paying attention to the amount of fertilizer usage is crucial to achieving ecological security goals.

Water-Land-Food Nexus for Sustainable Agricultural Development in Main Grain-Producing Areas of North China Plain.

Stable and sustainable food production is an important guarantee for national security and social stability. The uneven distribution of cultivated land and water resources will threaten national food security. In this study, we adopt the Gini coefficient and water-land matching coefficient for exploring the water-land nexus in the main grain-producing areas of North China Plain (NCP) from 2000 to 2020. The water-land-food nexus considering grain crop production structure is further explored from spatial and temporal multi-scales. The results show the following: (1) The Gini coefficient presents an increasing trend in the NCP, indicating an increasing imbalance in the water-land matching degree among inter-regions. (2) There are significant differences in the WL nexus and WLF nexus among regions, showing a spatial pattern of "worse in the north and better in the south". (3) The cities which belonged to the low WL-low WLF and high WL-low WLF should be considered as key targets when formulating policies. (4) Adjusting the wheat-maize biannual system, optimizing the grain cultivation structure, promoting semi-dryland farming, and developing low water-consuming and high-yielding crop varieties are essential measures for these regions. The research results provide significant reference for the optimal management and sustainable agricultural development of agricultural land and water resources in NCP.

Coordinated development of high-quality agricultural transformation and technological innovation: a case study of main grain-producing areas, China.

The high-quality development of agriculture is closely related to technological innovation, but the evolutionary characteristics of the relationship between agricultural transformation and technological innovation have received little study. This study takes 13 main grain-producing areas of China as the research object. Data collection was from 2004 to 2019. Based on the coupling coordination and responsiveness models, we analyze the spatio-temporal agriculture comprehensive level and the associated response degree of agricultural transformation to technological innovation. The results showed that (1) the comprehensive development of technological innovation showed a growth trend, while the agricultural transformation showed a U-shaped growth trend; (2) the coordinated development of these two systems has been significantly improved, but there are differences in the development speed of each province; (3) the coordinated gravity center moved southward in the spatial pattern, eventually presenting the characteristics of "higher level in the east and lower level in the west, while the higher level in the south and lower level in the north"; (4) the influence of technological innovation on agricultural transformation gradually changed from inhibition to positive promotion. In the end, this paper puts forward suggestions on the high-quality development of agriculture from the relationship of technological innovation and agricultural transformation.

Carbon emissions, energy consumption and economic growth: Evidence from the agricultural sector of China's main grain-producing areas.

China is currently the world's largest carbon emitter. As a large agricultural country, understanding the relationship between carbon emissions, economic growth and energy consumption in the agricultural sector can contribute to achieving the sustainable development of agriculture. Hence, this paper aims to investigate the relationship between carbon emissions, energy consumption and economic growth in the agricultural sector using a time series of data from China's main grain-producing areas during the period between 1996 and 2015. We first estimate the agricultural carbon emissions. And then based on the estimated results, we employ the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model, the Granger causality test based on the vector error correction model (VECM), and impulse response and variance decomposition to test the relationship between carbon emissions, energy consumption and economic growth in the agricultural sector. The estimated results support the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis for agricultural carbon emissions in China's main grain-producing areas. Furthermore, agricultural energy consumption has both the short-run and the long-run negative impacts on agricultural carbon emissions. In addition, we find that there is a bidirectional causality between agricultural carbon emissions and agricultural economic growth in both the short-run and the long-run, and the unidirectional causalities are found to exist from agricultural energy consumption to agricultural carbon emissions and agricultural economic growth. Finally, several policy recommendations are offered to promote the sustainable development of agriculture in China's main grain-producing areas.