Temporal and Spatial Differentiation and Driving Factors of China’s Agricultural Eco-Efficiency Considering Agricultural Carbon Sinks

Abstract

Climate change, greenhouse gas emissions, and food security have put forward higher requirements for sustainable agricultural development. Agricultural ecological efficiency (AEE) is an important indicator to evaluate the sustainable development of agriculture. Low carbon agriculture promotes sustainable agricultural development. Agricultural carbon sinks are an important output of agricultural production, but they have not been fully reflected in the current research on agricultural ecological efficiency. In this study, agricultural carbon sinks are considered as one of the expected outputs of AEE. The data envelopment method was used to measure the AEE of 31 provincial-level administrative regions in China from 2000 to 2019, and the AEE of China was compared with and without carbon sinks. The Gaussian kernel function was used to estimate the time evolution of regional differences in AEE. A geodetector model was used to detect the drivers of spatial differentiation of AEE in China. The results showed that considering agricultural carbon sinks as one of the expected measurement outputs brings the estimated AEE closer to reality. From 2000 to 2019, China’s AEE showed an upward trend, and the efficiency value increased from 0.48 to 0.95, an increase of 97.92%. The spatial distribution pattern of AEE in China was Northeast > West > Central > East, with obvious differences among provinces. The industrialization level, urban‒rural gap, agricultural economic level, agricultural disaster rate, and urbanization level were the leading driving forces for the spatial differentiation of AEE in China. The research will help to reveal the dynamic characteristics, spatial differentiation characteristics, and driving factors of China’s agricultural ecological efficiency, and provide a scientific reference for the realization of sustainable agricultural development and high-quality development.

Innovative measurement, trade-off-synergy relationship and influencing factors for agricultural net carbon emissions and effective supply of agricultural products in China

“…The calculation formula is as follows: where, ACS stands for agricultural carbon sinks, i is a specific crop, whereas m is the total number of crop types (here is 11); CAR i denotes the CO 2 absorption rate of crop i, AY i is the yield of crop i, and Q i is the water content of fruit when crop i is ripe; H i represents the economic coefficient of crop i, which is the ratio of economic yield to biological yield. The correlation coefficient of crops involved in the calculation of agricultural carbon sinks is cited from the work by Li et al (2022) [ 38 ], Cui et al (2022) [ 39 ] and Chen et al (2020) [ 40 ].…”

Time, Spatial and Component Characteristics of Agricultural Carbon Emissions of China

“…Li and Zhou [19] explored the role of technology in the effect between the agricultural GDP and agricultural carbon emission, and they found that technology has a positive effect on the reduction of the agricultural carbon emission. Li et al [20] found that the rise in agricultural ecological efficiency will cause sustainable and high-quality agricultural development. Given by the coupling coordination model, Xia et al [21] found that there is a significant positive relation between agricultural carbon emission and agricultural development, and this effect is relatively larger in northern China.…”

Effect of Agricultural Production Trusteeship on Agricultural Carbon Emission Reduction

“…In addition, they also adopt deep ploughing and deep loosening technology to improve soil fertility; in the selection of fertilizers, organic fertilizer's long-time effects shall be considered and low pollution shall be selected for as far as possible to reduce the application of chemical fertilizers [34]. Through the use of precise and efficient fertilization technology and the substitution of organic fertilizers, agricultural production trusteeship can effectively reduce the input of chemical fertilizers and reduce the carbon emission generated by the use of chemical fertilizers [35].…”