Understanding the nonpoint source pollution loads' spatiotemporal dynamic response to intensive land use in rural China

Great transition and new pattern: Agriculture and rural area green development and its coordinated relationship with economic growth in China

Agricultural and Rural Green Development (ARGD) and economic growth are major challenges prevalent in China, but also in other developing countries. A notable gap in current literature lies in the limited holistic approach to agriculture and rural areas, with scant attention being paid to the spatiotemporal evolution of ARGD and its coordination relationship with economic growth. This paper first offers a theoretical analysis of the interactive relationship between ARGD and economic growth and subsequently examines the policy implementation process in China in this regard. It observes 31 provinces in China from 1997 to 2020 to uncover the spatiotemporal evolution of Agricultural and Rural Green Development Efficiency (ARGDE). Using the coupling coordination degree (CCD) model and the local spatial autocorrelation model, this paper analyses the coordination relationship and spatial correlation between ARGDE and economic growth. The results show that ARGDE in China exhibited a phased growth trend and was greatly affected by policies during 1997-2020. The interregional ARGD produced a hierarchical effect. However, provinces with a higher ARGDE did not necessarily exhibit faster growth, leading to a differential pattern of optimization that involved continuous optimization, phased optimization, and continuous deterioration. Over a long period, ARGDE exhibited a trend of significant upward leaps or jumps. Finally, the CCD between ARGDE and economic growth improved, with a clear trend of high-high agglomeration characteristics that shifted from the eastern and northeastern provinces to the central and western ones. This suggests that promoting "quality agriculture" and "green agriculture" can have practical significance in accelerating the development of ARGD. In the future, it is vital to promote ARGD's transformation while mitigating the risk of degrading the coordinated relationship between ARGD and economic growth.

Food security and overuse of agrochemicals: evidence from China's major grain-producing areas policy

China's major grain-producing areas (MGPA) policy is the core policy to ensure national food security. While achieving long-term stable growth of grain production, assessing the impact of MGPA policy on agrochemical application has important practical significance in sustainable agricultural development and environmental protection. Based on panel data of 31 provinces in China from 1997 to 2020 and taking the MGPA policy introduced in 2004 as a quasi-natural experiment, we construct a difference-in-difference (DID) model to evaluate the overall impact and dynamic effect of MGPA policy. It is found that the MGPA policy do not exacerbate chemical overuse as a whole, but significantly reduce the fertilizer use by 11% and the pesticide use by 6%. Using the event study to decompose the policy effect year by year, we find that the MGPA policy significantly increased the fertilizer and pesticide use in a short period of time. Its influence on the application amount of two chemicals began to turn negative until the fourth and sixth years of the policy implementation and became more and more obvious. We conclude the intermediate paths of MGPA policy to change planting structure, deepen agricultural division of labor, and reduce the use of agrochemicals, which were verified by the intermediary effect model. From the perspective of provincial differences, MGPA policy reduced chemical use more in provinces with large output contribution and northern provinces. In addition, the MGPA policy has reduced the amount of fertilizer application in major rice-growing provinces, but not the amount of pesticide application. Our research can provide implications for other developing countries and emerging economies where agricultural production is highly dependent on chemicals and has green agricultural transition plans.

Evaluating Agricultural Sustainability and Green GDP in China: An Emergy Analysis

Agricultural sustainability is the foundation and a guarantee of sustainable human reproduction. The scientific assessment of China's agricultural sustainability is a prerequisite for properly resolving the conflict between short-term economic interests and long-term ecological security. This paper uses the emergy analysis method to estimate agricultural sustainability in China and further calculates the agricultural environmental cost and green GDP. The results show that China's agricultural emergy yield rate (EYR) is generally greater than 1. This means that more emergy is obtained in relation to renewable and non-renewable inputs from human activity, which also indicates that China's agricultural agroecosystem is characteristic of a profound transition from a self-supporting tradition to a modern industry based on external economic resource consumption. In contrast, China's agricultural growth is mainly driven by the input of a large amount of non-renewable resources, which makes the environmental loading rate (ELR) increase year by year, resulting in the deterioration of China's agricultural emergy sustainability index (ESI). China's agricultural green GDP accounts for about 94.4% of traditional GDP, which means that the average agricultural environmental cost is about 5.6%, mainly from land loss, accounting for 48.23% of the environmental cost.

Spatial Spillover Effects of Resource Misallocation on the Green Total Factor Productivity in Chinese Agriculture

Continuous resource misallocation not only results in total factor productivity loss but also leads to ecological degradation. Therefore, in the process of changing from extensive growth to intensive growth, Chinese agriculture should pay attention to the problem of resource misallocation. There is currently a lack of relevant research, especially concerning the spatial spillover effects of resource misallocation at the city level. To fill this gap, we employ a spatial panel model for empirical testing on the basis of measuring agricultural green total factor productivity (GTFP) in 306 cities in China from 1996-2017. We found that there is positive spatial autocorrelation in Chinese agricultural GTFP, but it decreases year by year. Misallocation in land, labor, machinery and fertilizer all directly hinder the local GTFP. The eastern is mainly negatively affected by neighbor resource misallocation, while the central and western are mainly negatively affected by local resource misallocation. Finally, the indirect effect of neighbor resource misallocation on GTFP gradually shifts from inhibiting effect to a facilitating effect with increasing spatial distance. These findings have clear policy implications: Chinese government should strengthen agricultural green technology innovation and diffusion, strengthen environmental regulation and promote the free movement of labor between regions and sectors.

Does economic agglomeration improve agricultural green total factor productivity? Evidence from China's Yangtze river delta

Economic agglomeration plays an important role in China's social transformation process of industry feeding agriculture and urban supporting rural areas, and is one of the core weapons to promote agricultural economic growth and green and efficient development. Based on panel data of 41 cities in the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) from 2010 to 2020, this paper constructs an "environment-resource-energy-economy" agricultural input-output system, taking into account carbon emissions and surface pollution, and provides a more comprehensive accounting of agricultural green total factor productivity (AGTFP), the non-linear effects of economic agglomeration on AGTFP and shock responses were empirically analyzed using a panel threshold model and a panel vector autoregression (VAR), respectively. The findings show that: (1) during the period 2010-2020, the AGTFP in the YRD showed an overall rising trend with regional spatial agglomeration characteristics. (2) Economic agglomeration has a triple threshold effect on AGTFP, which was a weak facilitative effect in the early stage, inhibited by the siphoning effect of resource loss and arable land fragmentation in the growth stage, promoted by the radiation effect of external increasing return to scale in the form of sharing, matching and learning in the maturity stage, and finally tends to decline. (3) The shock response of economic agglomeration to AGTFP showed a continuous positive shock, peaking in the first period and then gradually converging to zero. (4) The heterogeneity analysis demonstrated that economic agglomeration has a considerable impact on boosting AGTFP in non-metropolitan areas and cities on the outskirts of YRD. In the future, China should effectively play a positive role in economic agglomeration on AGTFP and enhance the mutual coordination of economic agglomeration and agricultural green development in the process of urban cluster economic growth.

Relationship between Urban Land Use Efficiency and Economic Development Level in the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei Region

Due to limited land resources, it is necessary to balance urban economic development and efficient land use. Clarifying the relationship between the two is crucial to improving both economic efficiency and land use efficiency. Considering the undesirable output of urban land use, this paper adopts a super efficiency SBM model to quantify the urban land use efficiency (ULUE) of the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei (BTH) region from 1999 to 2019, and analyzes the relationship between ULUE and economic development level (EDL) by combining the Tapio model and the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) model. The results show the following: (1) During the study period, the ULUE showed a fluctuating upward trend on the temporal scale, with the lowest and highest inflection points occurring in 2002 and 2018, respectively, and a distribution pattern of “high in the southeast and low in the northwest” on the spatial scale. (2) The decoupling relationship between ULUE and EDL showed repeated fluctuations between decoupling and coupling states on the temporal scale, but the overall showed a transition trend from decoupling state to coupling state. On the spatial scale, from north to south, there were a strong decoupling state (SDS), weak decoupling state (WDS), strong decoupling state (SDS), and weak decoupling state (WDS) in order, showing a regular interval repetition distribution pattern. (3) The relationship between ULUE and EDL showed an EKC “U-shaped” curve, that is, ULUE decreases first and then increases with the increases in EDL. The results of this study can provide a reference for the coordinated and sustainable development of the BTH region.