How is green and sustainable agriculture evolving in youngest province of China?

With the increasing environmental and resource problems associated with agriculture, the promotion of sustainable agricultural development has been recommended in many areas of China and also beyond its borders. As a contribution to achieving sustainable development goals, the Chinese government first proposed green development in 2015 and implemented the agriculture green development (AGD) program in 2017 to address a range of issues related to the future development of agriculture in China and the well-being of people living in rural areas. In contrast to the concept of traditional agricultural development, AGD is a benign development strategy that integrates environmental sustainability into sustainable economic and social development. Extensive research has shown that quantifying and tracking progress toward sustainable development is essential to guiding the policy development and implementation in different regions. However, there is no broad agreement on how spatiotemporal variation of AGD should be quantified to produce numerical values to represent appropriately the overall performance of AGD.

Prof. Jianbo Shen from China agricultural university and his team developed a systematic index evaluation system to assess the performance of socioeconomic, food production and environmental components in a key economic region (Hainan Province) of China. It is based upon the operation of a modified NUFER (nutrient flows in food chain, environment and resource use) model, used to assess the effects of strategy development and the pathway of AGD over space and time from 1988 to 2019. Scenario analysis was used to predict the future progress of AGD in Hainan Province, providing a reference for the formulation of relevant development policies for the region. The results show that Hainan improved its AGD index (representing the overall performance toward achieving AGD) from 38.8 in 1988 to 40.9 in 2019. The socioeconomic development and agricultural productivity have improved with time; environmental quality declined due to overuse of chemicals from 1988 to 2013, but steadily improved after 2013, indicating positive effects of reducing chemical input. There was a higher AGD index in the coastal vs. central regions and the southern vs. northern regions. Scenarios featuring improved nutrient management or optimized diet structure and reduced waste improved economic benefits and social productivity while concurrently reducing environmental degradation. But high resource input, unreasonable waste management, and high environmental pressure are still the main limiting factors of AGD in Hainan Province.

In the 1988–2013 period, the AGD index showed that the higher the score for economy and social development was, the lower the environmental score was for Hainan Province, indicating it was unsustainable to develop the economy and food productivity. Therefore, the realization of AGD in Hainan depends not only on improved crop yields and economic benefit to the communities, but also on introducing the means/policies to restrict environmental pollution and degradation. Potential adaptations include optimized spatial planning of agricultural communities, rational fertilizer application in agriculture, a healthier diet, and a reduction in food waste. In addition, many countries now place emphasis on land management policies that make room for nature using techniques such as land sparing or land sharing.

The study quantified the spatiotemporal progress toward AGD in Hainan Province, highlighting important implications for future policies. This method can help evaluate the impact on food production, socioeconomic and environment of implementing policies (e.g., the fertilizer-reduction) in regions. These results provide new insights for the future development of green and sustainable agriculture and formulation of agricultural policies in Hainan Province of China and even other developing countries that are facing or will soon face similar challenges.

This study has been published on the Journal of Frontiers of Agricultural Science and Engineering in Volume 11, Issue 1, 2024, DOI: 10.15302/J-FASE-2024538.