Improving eco-efficiency for the sustainable agricultural production: A case study in Shandong, China

By Xiangzheng Deng, John Gibson. Technological forecasting & social change, 2018

195 citations recorded by the source corpus.

With rapid economic growth and urbanization in China affecting agricultural land, it is of great importance to improve eco-efficiency for sustainable agricultural development to ensure food security. Shandong, as a key agricultural production base in China that experiences accelerated urbanization, was chosen as our case study area. Supported by a large scale natural and socioeconomic data, we estimated land productivity in Shandong, China during 1990–2010 using the Estimation System of Land Production, then analyzed the eco-efficiency based on Stochastic Frontier Analysis. The results showed that land productivity was unevenly distributed in Shandong, with relatively lower values in regions covered by built-up area. The regional eco-efficiency in Shandong was mostly over 0.9, expect for cities located far from the political or economic centers. The results indicated there exists trade-offs between agricultural production and urbanization, and it is necessary to adjust its agricultural technological measures according to local specific conditions to improve eco-efficiency for sustainable agricultural development in Shandong.

Subfields: Environmental Chemistry, Global and Planetary Change, Management Science and Operations Research

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d1992fd51efae8bda3e9aaa63cd9eb12ab7b904d