Study On Sustainable Agricultural Land Use Patterns Under The Premise Of Ensuring Food Security With Lower Environmental Cost

Food security is a major strategic issue that related to national economic development, social stability and national independence; meanwhile, agri-environmental issue is the key to achieve sustainable development of agriculture in China. In the next decade, high-intensive agricultural land use pattern in China will face with the increasing demands of grain production and farming income, as well as the challenge caused by gradual deterioration of ecological environment.In the current situation, sustainable land use patterns with less agricultural inputs and lower environmental risk base on the premise of ensuring food security need to be established to solve this problem. In this study, we began with the perspective of analysis of land use system and established the risk assessment methodologies for food security and agricultural environment. Then, based on the basic process of risk management-risk identification, risk analysis, risk evaluation and risk prevention as well as the general research framework from national level to local level, the food security risk and the environmental risk derived from high-intensive agricultural land use was systematically studied. The results are listed as follows:1. Analysis and effect evaluation of agricultural land use system in ChinaFirst, based on the China’s national conditions, the agricultural land use system has been systematically analyzed and the risk assessment methodologies for food security and agricultural environment have been established at the national level; after that, food security risk and agri-environmental risk were used to assess the positive effects and negative effects of agricultural land use, respectively. The results showed that:even on the premise of per capita share of grain reaches the well-off standard, China could guarantee around95%food self-sufficiency as long as the identified natural disasters occurred at no more than the historical average for the period1986-2011. In accordance with the current grain production situation and the level of grain reserves, as long as no severe natural disaster constantly occurs, China’s food security can be guaranteed in the next few years. Besides, all provinces had agri-environmental risk and the spatial distribution of the risk showed significant regional difference-the eastern and the central provinces had a higher risk than the north, the northwest and the southwest provinces.2. Assessing integrated effects of agricultural land use in the major grain-producing areasIn this section, the Dongting Lake area was chosen as the case study area. In order to assess the integrated effects of regional high-intensive agricultural land use that focused on grain production, an assessment framework was built based on the improved risk assessment methodologies for food security and agricultural environment at the national level. The results showed that:as long as there is no serious natural disaster, the grain production of the most counties in the Dongting Lake area could fully meet the national needs to achieve food security both in2015and2020. Meanwhile, the environmental risks related to agricultural land use in2020will show an increasing tendency compared with in2015in this area. On the whole, the integrated effects of agricultural land use will show a downward trend between 2015and2020in this area, which means the current agricultural land use patterns are unsustainable.3. Ensuring food security with lower environmental cost under high-intensive agricultural land use patternsIn this section, the Taojiang County located in the central Dongting Lake area was chosen as the case study area. To provide an operational approach for the regional policymakers to address the twin challenges-food security and environmental sustainability, based on the local natural resources status and the socio-economic conditions, this section took the perspective of farmers’decision-making behavior and established four foci-differentiated scenarios to quantitatively explore the way to achieve food security with lower environmental cost. The results showed that:even without considering the progress of agricultural technology, compared with the non-intervention scenario, there will be a12%increase in food production as well as a13%decrease in fertilizer input under the yield-environment-balanced agricultural land use scenario in2020in Taojiang County. Under the latter scenario, the agricultural land use patterns could meet the basic requirements of sustainable development. How to promote the proportion of cultivated land circulation exceeding80percent and impel the farmland transferred to the farmers with advanced agronomic techniques simultaneous controlling the farm size of the large-scale farmers would be the key to achieve the optimized scenario. Besides, actively promoting the construction of agricultural infrastructure would be a useful approach to resist natural disasters thereby enhancing the farmers’ willingness on grain cultivation.