Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: The abandonment of cultivated land has profound impacts on national grain yield and farmers’ livelihoods, especially in China. Here we conduct a spatial analysis of cultivated land abandonment by using the national geoinformation survey data in 2017 and land use change survey data. We find abandoned cultivated land accounts for 5.57% of total cultivated land in China. Spatially, it shows a changing pattern from a scattered distribution to the concentration, as well as the continuous expansion from the suburban areas and exurban areas to the main grain producing areas with fertile cultivated land. Also, cultivated land abandonment has caused 6.62% of grain yield loss in China, which threatened the national food security. Under the influence of dual urban-rural structure, cultivated land abandonment is viewed as the rational choice for farmers to cope with the dilemma between the increasing agricultural production cost and decreasing agricultural income. The total loss of grain yield due to abandoned cultivated land in China was 7.1502 million tons. Some policy tools such as, fallowing, land conversion, land transfer, and high farmland construction standard and subsidies should be adopted by policy-makers to achieve the food security.
Source: Applied Sciences
DOI: 10.3390/app15010165
Language: English
Subfield: Global and Planetary Change
Field: Environmental Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
SDG: Zero hunger
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $2,728
OpenAlex ID: W4405944971