Spatio-temporal Differentiation And Growth Path Of Agricultural Green Total Factor Productivity In China

Agricultural growth has relied on factor-driven for a long time in China,but the potential of traditional factors has gradually been exhausted.The potential of modern factors still needs to be tapped.The constraints of resources,energy and environment have made the pressure of agricultural sustainable development cascade.Government of China has already profoundly recognized the fragility of agriculture and has continuously advocated the green development of agriculture.Improving agricultural green total factor productivity(AGTFP)has become a pivotal approach to solve the dilemma of agricultural “resources-energy-environment-growth”and realize agricultural green development.Constructing a comparable AGTFP theoretical framework has theoretical and practical significance for improving the agricultural green growth theory and promoting green,coordinated and sustainable development of agriculture.Taking the general agriculture as the research object,the panel data of 30 provinces selected in China from 1993 to 2016 are taken as samples,and the core issues are studied.The main contents and conclusions are as follows:(1)AGTFP connotation deepening and theoretical framework constructionAGTFP is defined as the remaining part of the agricultural economic growth that excludes the contribution of capital investment and labor input under the conditions of resource,energy and environmental constraints,and the quality of agricultural green growth is measured.It integrate“resource-energy-environment-economy”into a framework,construct a five-element theory of agricultural input factors,and use agricultural gross output value as the expected output,and agricultural non-point source pollution and carbon emissions as undesired outputs.Based on the Poter technology,theoretical framework for AGTFP is built.(2)AGTFP measurement and spatio-temporal differentiationBased on the theoretical framework,the AGTFP measurement system is constructed.The basic EBM model is extended to the EBM model with undesired output.The entropy weight method is used to improve it and combined with the GML model as the AGTFP measurement model.AGTFP is measured in static and dynamic perspectives,its spatial and temporal differentiation pattern is analyzed.The results show that: Firstly,the level of AGTFP was significantly lower than that of ATFP.Secondly,from the evolution of time series,the average AGTFP from 1993 to 2016 was 0.628,which is far from the production front.The growth rate of AGTFP is slow,and the growth source comes from the“single-wheel drive” of green technology progress,and the growth block is green technology efficiency.Thirdly,considering the spatial differentiation of AGTFP,the block difference is obvious.The level of AGTFP in the east is the highest,followed by the west and the lowest in the middle.The AGTFP level in the grain sales area is much higher than the main production area and the balance area.The eastern and western AGTFP grew at an average annual rate of0.7% and 1.2%.The root cause of growth was green technology progress.The central region saw an average annual decline of 0.84% with a “central collapse”.The growth trend of AGTFP in the east,middle and west is in a “M” type fluctuation.The growth sources of the three food function areas AGTFP are all from green technology progress.Inter-provincial agricultural inputs and output redundancy vary widely.(3)AGTFP regional differentiationMoran’I and LISA shows that AGTFP and its cumulative growth rate have significant positive spatial correlation.The convergence model is used to test the regional difference and its evolution from the two dimensions of time and space.The results show that the cyclic accumulation effect of the element promotes the spatial agglomeration of AGTFP through self-realization mechanism,and the regional agricultural green production is non-equilibrium.If the cyclic accumulation effect such as element flow is ignored,it is difficult to truly describe the convergence state of the difference between regions.The progressive shift of the nuclear density distribution curve to the right indicates that the AGTFP is growing at an increasing rate,but the inter-provincial differences are difficult to achieve steady state.The AGTFP cumulative growth rate gradually evolved from“polarization”to“single polarization”,and the degree of dispersion between provinces increased,and multiple equilibrium states were difficult to form.The spatial evolution analysis of spatial Markov chain shows that AGTFP has the characteristics of “club convergence” and tends to evolve endogenously in the long run.There are phenomena of “being a bad neighbor” and “being a good neighbor”.The cumulative growth rate of AGTFP has spatial agglomeration properties,and the neighborhood spatial lag type affects the stability of its spatial transition.The Arcgis trend surface analysis shows that the AGTFP and its cumulative growth rate regional differences are not large,and it is difficult to change in the long run.(4)AGTFP influencing factors extractionThe Spatial Dubin two-way fixed effect model is built to identify the key influencing factors after variable selection,mechanism analysis and multi-model comparison.Comparing the estimated value of the relevant variable parameters,it is proposed that the “troika”composed of “agricultural industrial restructuring-rural human capital-agricultural science and technology investment” has a decisive role.Comparing the degree of significance,it is found that there are stable “seven rounds of factors”,namely,the level of economic development,agricultural industrial restructuring,agricultural science and technology investment,rural human capital,industrialization,agricultural infrastructure,and energy consumption.Among them,economic development level,agricultural industrial restructuring,agricultural science& technology investment,agricultural human capital,and agricultural infrastructure are the key drivers of AGTFP.Energy consumption and industrialization are the“short boards” that constrain AGTFP.(5)AGTFP growth path designIt is fully demonstrated the rationality of introducing the fs QCA method into the AGTFP theory,based on which the six equivalence AGTFP growth paths are extracted,and only the combination of agricultural science & technology investment,agricultural industrial structure,agricultural human capital,non-energy consumption and non-industrialization can promote the growth of AGTFP.There are four ways to increase the cumulative growth rate of AGTFP,and agricultural human capital is a key factor in the growth of AGTFP growth rate,but it also depends on the synergy of factors such as economic development level.