Spatiotemporal Patterns and Convergence Analysis of Green Agricultural Development: A Case Study of Xinjiang in China

Abstract

Under the dual historical responsibility of the double carbon target and the rural revitalisation strategy, effectively improving green agricultural development level in Xinjiang is an important means to break the dilemma of inclusive agricultural economic growth under the complex environmental regulations in the western region nowadays. Based on the panel data of Xinjiang from 2007 to 2019, this paper incorporates agricultural carbon emissions and agricultural non-point source pollution into the same framework. The SBM-Global-Malmquist-Luenberger(GML) productivity index including directional distance function is used to measure the agricultural green total factor productivity(AGTFP) in various regions of Xinjiang, and then the Dagum Gini coefficient decomposition and kernel density estimation are used to investigate the regional differences and dynamic evolution of agricultural green development level in Xinjiang. Finally, the classical and spatial β-convergence models are used to analyze the convergence characteristics and influencing factors of agricultural green development level in Xinjiang. The study found that: AGTFP in Xinjiang showed a "wave-like" development during the sample period, with an overall growth trend; There are significant non-equilibrium characteristics of AGTFP in the sample period, and the agglomeration phenomenon of AGTFP gradually strengthens over time; The overall variation in AGTFP shows a fluctuating upward trend, with intra-regional variation being greater in northern than in southern and eastern Xinjiang, and inter-regional variation making the highest contribution to the overall variation; Inter-regional differences AGTFP have gradually widened and are multi-polar. Polarisation has increased in the northern and southern Xinjiang regions, and the gap has decreased in the eastern Xinjiang region; There is significant absolute β convergence and conditional β convergence of AGTFP during the sample period, and the rate of conditional β convergence is significantly higher than that of absolute β convergence, and the inclusion of spatial factors further increases the rate of convergence. There is still much room for improvement in the level of green agricultural development in Xinjiang. We should speed up green agricultural technology innovation and improve AGTFP; formulate green agricultural development policies according to local conditions; pay attention to the convergence effect and promote coordinated growth in AGTFP in regional agriculture.