Analysis on the changes of fertilization intensity and efficiency in China's grain production from 1980 to 2019.

BACKGROUND: Relieving serious non-point source pollution of nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and potassium (K) is an urgent task in China. It is necessary to explore the changing characteristics of chemical fertilization intensity (FI) and efficiency to provide references. A new method of 'relative productivity proportion weight', which was simpler than data envelope analysis, was proposed to construct models of fertilizer allocation efficiency (FAE) and chemical fertilizer integrated efficiency (FIE) by considering NPK multi-inputs and the grain output scale, respectively. RESULTS: During 1980-2014, the FIs of NPK chemical fertilizers in China showed a significant growing trend. After reaching the highest value of 339 kg ha-1 in 2014, FIs were reduced to 303 kg ha-1 in 2019, higher than the 225 kg ha-1 maximum safe usage internationally recognized. Meanwhile, the pattern of change of FAE was one of 'decreasing to increasing', with values of 1 in 1980, 0.66 in 2003, and 0.80 in 2019. FIE basically showed an increasing trend, which could be divided into three stages: the first stage of low efficiency during 1980-2009, the second stage of medium efficiency after 2010, and the third stage of high efficiency after 2018. CONCLUSION: From 1980 until 2019, a reduction of FAE from 1 to 0.80 with an average of 0.75 was observed in China. FIE was found between 0.65 and 0.85 and had the potential of upgrading by 15-35%. Therefore, China needs to improve the fertilizer use efficiency in order to strive for negative growth of chemical fertilizer intensity and ecological agriculture construction. © 2022 Society of Chemical Industry.

Regional differences of individual and allocation efficiencies of health resources in China.

Background: The existing health resources and services are difficult to meet the needs of rapid economic development and the aging population in China. This paper evaluates the regional differences of individual and allocation efficiencies of health resources in China to explore ways to change the current situation. Methods: The models of single-input single-output efficiency (SISOE), single-input multi-output efficiency (SIMOE), multi-input single-output efficiency (MISOE), and multi-input multi-output efficiency (MIMOE) were developed to calculate the individual and allocation efficiencies of health resources of China in this study. Results: It was found that the efficiencies of the number of health institutions (NHI) in the eastern and western regions of China were relatively close, with values of 0.61 and 0.59, respectively, significantly higher than 0.49 in the middle region. The efficiencies of the number of health personnel (NHP) in the eastern, middle, and western regions were closer, with values of 0.77, 0.75, and 0.79, respectively. The efficiencies of the number of health institution beds (NHIB) in the eastern and western regions were very close, with values of 0.79 and 0.78, respectively, while that in the middle region was 0.72. The efficiencies of the total health expenditure (THE) were 0.72, 0.76, and 0.79 in the east, middle, and western regions, respectively. The efficiencies of the number of diagnosis and treatment persons (NDTP) were 0.81, 0.70, and 0.71 in the eastern, middle, and western regions, respectively, while the efficiencies of the number of inpatients (NI) were 0.75, 0.79, and 0.81, respectively. The efficiencies of the utilization rate of beds (URB) and the average days of hospitalization (ADH) in the three regions were below 0.51. The health resources allocation efficiencies (HRAEs) were 0.86, 0.83, and 0.87 in the eastern, middle, and western regions, respectively. Conclusion: There were obvious regional differences in HRAE in China with the situation of "Middle Collapse." The main direct reason for the low HRAE in the middle region was the lower efficiencies of NHI, NHIB, URB, and ADH. It revealed that there was relatively blind expansion of health institutions and beds with lower health service quality in the middle region. Governments should make strategic adjustments to public health resources and increase the investment in medical technology and manpower in the middle region. Hospitals in the eastern region should strengthen inter-regional medical and health technical cooperation with partners in the middle region by establishing a tele-medical network. The models of SISOE, SIMOE, MISOE, and MIMOE put forward in this study are simple, reasonable, and useful for resource efficiency analysis, which makes it convenient to adopt targeted measures to upgrade the efficiency of resource allocation. This study provides a new perspective and method to understand the mechanism of regional differences in China's health resource allocation efficiency.