Spatio-Temporal Variation Of Soybean Production In Northeast China And Its Influencing Factors

Soybean is one of the most important food crop and oil crops in the world.Soybean was first planted in China,which has been historically the world's largest producer and exporter.While since the 1990 s,national consumption demands for vegetable oil,meat,egg and milk products have rapidly increased with the improvement of living standards.China has then transformed into the world's largest soybean importer.In 2017,national soybean demand exceeded 100 million tons,90% of which came from the abroad,with a total of 95.54 million tons.What is important is that 34% of the total import was from the USA.However,domestic soybean production was only 14.5 million tons,accounting for 4% of the world sum.With Sino-US trade frictions escalating in 2018,in the first three quarters of that year,soybean import from the USA have decreased by 45% compared to those in the same period last year according to the national bureau of stastics.Therefore,how to improve the domestic soybean production and revitalize the soybean industry becomes an important issue to be solved.Northeast China is the most traditional and superior soybean production area,where planting areas and yields take up 50% of the country sum.Since 2008,the prices of agricultural products in the international market violently fluctuated.Northeast China took the lead in implementing the temporary purchase and storage system of corn and soybean.However,as the economic benefits of soybean were lower than those of corn,soybean area fell down with a gradual move towards the cold area in the north.As a result,the planting structure has been unbalanced.Under the background of Sino-US trade friction,it is of practical significance to analyze spatio-temporal changes and influencing factors of soybean production in Northeast China for optimizing the distribution of soybean production and promoting the revival of soybean industry.This paper made specific analyis from the following four aspects:Analysis on the spatio-temporal changes of soybean production in Northeast China was first made.Descriptive statistical analysis was applied to describe the temporal characteristics of sown area,yield per unit and yield.Production concentration index,production scale index and spatial autocorrelation were used to analyze spatial distribution and agglomeration.The results showed that since 1990,the sown areas and yields decreased after increasing while the yield per unit area slowly increased.There was a rapid decrease of sown area and yield during 2009 to 2014.Soybean production was concentrated in Hulun Buir,Heihe,Qiqihar and Suihua,which were located in the north.It showed a significant feature in spatial agglomeration and the high-value agglomeration type areas were located in the above four regions.While the low-value agglomeration type areas were in the middle and south of Northeast China.Influencing factors of soybean production changes was then studied.Qualitative analysis and quantitative analysis methods were combined to explain the reasons from several aspects including the nature,the society,technology level,economic benefits,policy and trade.The index system of influencing factors was constructed for panel data model.The grey relational degree was also used for peasants' survey.The economic benefits and natural factors had main effects.Specifically speaking,the effective irrigated area,cultivated land type,net benefit ratio of soybean and corn,policy factors and yield per unit area had positive effects on soybean production changes.While the proportion of animal husbandry's output value,soybean price and the selling difficulty had negative effects.Subsequently,the optimization adjustment of soybean production layout was studied.Under the three scenarios of market demand orientation,cultivated land constraint and economic benefit maximization,grey prediction model,multi-year averaging and linear programming were applied to make predictions.It was predicted that the soybean production scale in Northeast China in 2030 would be 7.66 million hectare,3.30 million hectare and 2.23 million hectare.Taking the production scale index as the weight,it is better to expand the soybean planting scale in Heihe,Qiqihar,Suihua and Hulun Buir.Finally,the optimal layout and development countermeasures of soybean industry in Northeast China were raised.It was suggested to plan and construct soybean production and processing base in the north of Northeast China.In addition,it was put forward to improve supporting policy,planting technology,agricultural infrastructure in the west of Northeast China and to cultivate processing industry.