| Agriculture is the foundation of the national economic construction and development and is the most basic material production departments. It can provide raw materials and motivation for the development of other departments. For such a big agriculture province of Xinjiang, healthy and sustainable development of the agriculture and the rural economy is not only related to the lasting peace and stability of Xinjiang and the ascension of overall economy level, and even has important influence upon the development of national economy in China. In recent years, with the central and regional governments increasing policy support and economic investment to agriculture, Xinjiang agricultural development is faster. But there are some factors that influence and even restrict the agricultural development, such as the great number of agricultural population, low levels of agricultural mechanization and modernization, low utilization efficiency of agricultural environment resources, low levels of the overall quality of farmers and the income, fragile agricultural ecological environment and so on. Therefore, that how to evaluate scientifically agro-ecosystem of Xinjiang, allocate rationally and make good use of environmental resources, optimize the industrial pattern and product mix, promote the quality of agricultural products and improve the level of development and the sustainable development ability of agriculture in Xinjiang are worthy of further study.Existing studies about Xinjiang agro-ecosystem mainly focus on the agricultural economic benefits and give less consideration to environmental factors and input of environmental resources in the process of agricultural production. So it is inevitable to ignore the role of environmental resources in agricultural development. The emergy theory and analysis method founded by the American ecologist H.T.Odum in the late 1980 s has opened up a new research approach for the sustainable development of ecosystem. Using the theory and analysis method can connect and unify organically the ecological environment system with human society and economic system and make quantitative analysis of contributions made by the economic society and environmental resources to the development of agricultural economy. It has very important practical significance to optimize the proportion between environmental resources and economic investment in Xinjiang agro-ecosystem, improve the utilization efficiency of environmental resources, adjust the industrial pattern and product mix of agriculture and promote the sustainable development of agriculture.Taking Xinjiang agro-ecosystem as the research object, this paper uses the emergy theory and analysis method to analyze emergy input and output and emergy indicators in the system from 2004 to 2013. First of all, it quantifies environmental resources’ and economic investment’s contribution to the agro-ecosystem and agricultural output in the form of emergy uniformly. Secondly, it analyzes the present situation and dynamic variation of agro-ecosystem emergy input. Again, it analyzes the present situation and dynamic variation of agro-ecosystem emergy output. Finally, on the basis of above research, it structures emergy analysis indexes system of agro-ecosystem to make a scientific, comprehensive and dynamic evaluation about the system structure, function and so on. The results of the study are as follows:(1) The variation of total emergy input of Xinjiang agro-ecosystem is greatly influenced by average annual precipitation. Scarce rainfall to a great extent influences and restricts the agricultural development in Xinjiang.(2) Agro-ecosystem has a strong self-sufficient ability and relies heavily on the natural environment resources, but the dependence is gradually reduced.(3) Emergy investment rate of Agro-ecosystem is between 0.1228 and 0.2126 and the overall trend is rising, but it is far below the world average(emergy investment rate is about 2). The utilization degree of environmental resources in the system is increased gradually but still low.(4) Agro-ecosystem is in the labor-intensive development phase. Agriculture still has characteristics of traditional agricultural production and its reliance on labor and animal power is larger and the level of mechanization is low.(5) The utilization efficiency of economic input emergy is higher. Agricultural products have strong competitive advantages. The economic benefits of agriculture is relatively high.(6) Environment carrying rate of agro-ecosystem is small. Agricultural production is little influence on the natural environment, but the influence increases year by year.(7) Agriculture industry structure gradually inclines to non-balanced coordinative development. The difference of industrial advantage degree is apparent.(8) In 2004-2013, system stability degree of Xinjiang agro-ecosystem remains above 0.5 and declines slowly as a whole. System stability is waning.(9) Sustainable development index of agro-ecosystem is greater than 10. It shows that the agricultural development level is not high and exploitation and utilization degree of natural environment resources is not enough. Sustainable development ability of agro-ecosystem is weak.According to research conclusions, this paper puts forward pertinently some specific and feasible countermeasures and suggestions. It needs to optimize emergy input structure and increase economic investment emergy to improve operational efficiency of agro-ecosystem. It needs to optimize emergy output structure and continue to accelerate the progress of adjusting and improving the industrial pattern and product mix of agriculture. It needs to increase investment in agricultural science and technology and improve utilization efficiency of natural environment resources so as to increase agricultural competitiveness. It needs to enhance the level of agricultural products processing so that farmers’ income and agricultural economic investment are improved. It needs to protect natural environment resources, strengthen the construction of ecological environment and promote the sustainable development of agro-ecosystem. |
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