| Agricultural multi-function is defined as, in addition to producing food and fiber, agriculture may produce a range of other non-commodity utilities such as regulating eco-environment, assuring food security, contributing to rural viability, and increasing the export income, etc. This feature not only decides the sustained and steady growth of regional economy, and is significant to the coordinated development of national economy and society, and the regulation and maintenance of eco-environment as well. The exploration about the theoretical, methodological, and practical studies of agricultural multifunction are widely concerned among the international organizations, government departments and academia since the1990s. A number of results about the type, value and policy of regional agricultural multi-function have been researched in many countries or regions from Europe, America, Australia, East Asia, and Southeast Asia. Regionalization of agricultural functions at a provincial level is the fundamental work and realization scheme of national regionalization. And its core missions are scheme out scientific orientation of regional agricultural functions based on the features of land resource and agricultural development and spatial distribution pattern, and making proper agricultural policies to guarantee the implementation of the scheme. Application of the regionalization results will be significant for regional development, such as regulating the space order of modern agriculture development, establishing a new agricultural industry system, generally implementing the construction of new rural countryside and harmonious urban-rural development, as well as realizing the regional coordinated development of economy and environment. This paper attempts to use a method which integrates multivariate statistics with GIS spatial analysis and aims to give a solution of multi-source data fusion. Hubei, the studying area, is a central China province which own richness and variety of land resources, relatively sound agricultural foundation, and multiple functional agriculture, so its agricultural functional regionalization is representative for similar provinces.Through a macro-ecosystem view over the inner feature of agriculture, this paper systematically analyzes about the formation mechanism and unified planning of agricultural multifunction. Agricultural multifunction is formed under some special natural basis and social-economic background. Agriculture, as a complex and regulated ecosystem which combined nature and society with economy together, has its own objectively existing multifunction. At the early period, the main purposes of agriculture are to ensure the supplication of major farm produce necessary for the society and the farmers'existence need. But regional agricultural multifunction is increasingly concerned along with the great change of national economy and international trade circumstances, and the improvement of regional urbanization. In itself, the development of farm and rural also requires the new life breathed from multifunction. Agricultural multifunction have inter-regional differences, and the composite of various functions in an inner region is a unity of contradictions among those functions, so it is necessary to implement unified planning of agricultural multifunction. That is, a unified regionalization of agricultural functions is needed.In the empirical analysis of Hubei's agricultural functions, the paper analyzes the characteristics, space structure and regionalization of agricultural multifunction by the use of statistics, spatial statistics and map overly tools of GIS. The analysis unit is county-level. The analytical data is mainly based on the survey over county-level and city-level, covering fifty county indices and four city indices. The periods of survey data are from2004to2007. Some present data are updated according to Hubei statistical yearbook2008and Hubei land use communique. Hubei administrative division is also updated. In view of the deficiency of the survey data, this analysis adds some map data, including Hubei DEM data, Hubei land use map, and Hubei traffic map in the spatial analysis. In the spatial structure analysis of agricultural functions, this analysis is the first to use the combination of multivariate statistics with GIS spatial analysis tools in order to integrating and processing the various data from different sources. At first, the data are sorted and processed to analyze the spatial structure and the rating of four types of agricultural functions which are agricultural produce supplying, employment security, ecological regulatory, and leisure. And then, the regionalization of agricultural functions is achieved with map overlay method based on the rating of each function.In spatial structure analysis, some main conclusions are as follows.(1) The analyses of agricultural produce supplying function are accomplished with spatial autocorrelation of the agricultural comprehensive advantages index and the superiority indices of main agricultural products. It is shown that Hubei agricultural comprehensive supply capacity has obvious characteristics of spatial agglomeration. High values are performed local clusting at the north of Jianghan Plain and the hills of northern Hubei, and low values are significantly clusting at northwest of Hubei. The analysis of main agricultural products shows that their supplications present different spatial clusting characteristics respectively and regionalism is distinct.(2) The analyses of employment and security function are accomplished with spatial autocorrelation by the use of some relative indices such as cultivated land area per capita, agricultural labor capacity, agricultural surplus labor, the proportion of agricultural population in the total population, and the proportion of agricultural income in the rural revenue. The results show that agricultural employment and security capacity is stronger mainly at the counties of the eastern Jianghan Plain and the eastern Hubei along Yangtze River where the cultivated land resources are rich and the population is dense; Urban areas has certain space for absorbing agricultural labor transfer from the surrounding areas.(3) The ecological regularity function is analyzed based on Hubei land use map and DEM data. Through overlay of land use map, DEM and administrative division map, the whole province is divided into four types of region, that is, Jianghan Plain, the hills of central and northern Hubei, and the low hilly land northeast and southeast Hubei, and the mountain area of western Hubei. Their landscape pattern of the land use, cultivated land structure and characteristics of the land-sloping are analyzed respectively. The calculation method of dominances and fragmentation of cultivated land are established in order to analysis the block stability and regional characteristics of the agricultural ecological regularity. The results show that the ecological regulating function is strongest at Jianghan Plain, the middle reaches valley of Hanjiang River, and the eastern Hubei along Yangtze River where the cultivated land dominances are higher and the block stabilities are well. The second stronger areas are the hills of northern Hubei, and the low hilly land northeast and southeast Hubei. The third areas are distributed at the Three Gorges Volley, southwestern Hubei, and Danjiangkou Reservoir Area where some large water complex require rigid ecological protection while farmers reclaim.(4) The analyses of agricultural leisure function are mainly based on the large city such as Wuhan (or Wuhan-Huangshi), Xiangyang, Yichang and Jingzhou. In the leisure zones of each large city whose radiation radii are50km and100km from the center of a city, the spatial structure features of the agricultural leisure space scopes, the traffic conditions and the resources are discussed. On the basis of the study mentioned above, the paper achieves the rating results for the four types of agricultural function respectively using k-means clustering or map overlay method.Complying with some regionalization principles, such as, relating between regions, sustainable development, relative consistency, dominant features, maintain integrity of county administrative region, the scheme of agricultural functions regionalization in Hubei is achieved which is based on the rating results of agricultural functions by the use of map overlay method. The whole province is divided into four dominant functional regions, which are primary agricultural products supply, special products supply and employment and social security, ecological regulation and protection, leisure surrounding large city. To ensure the schemes can be implemented operatively, a secondary partition program is added. In accordance with the location, terrain characteristics and the type of primary agricultural products, the four dominant functional regions are further divided into ten partitions.The application and extension of agricultural functions regionalization program will vigorously accelerate the sustainable development of agriculture and rural social-economy, promote Hubei to achieve the leading development of regional and rural-urban coordination in the upsurge of central China. However, the successful implementation of the program must be ensured under a series of policies and supporting approaches. Because it is needed for people to change their traditional view on industry economics to adapt themselves to the function extension, the transformation is closely linked to government functions and many non-agricultural sectors. Finally, this article discusses the grantee measurements from several aspects, such as strengthening the agricultural industrial policy, consummating the mechanisms of financial support and market financing, establishing a management system of multi-department coordination, transforming the government functions, and improves government performance appraisal system.
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