Spatial And Temporal Changes In Grain Production In Kazakhstan And Its Driving Factors

Food security is a major issue related to the stable and development of a country and region.China's total grain output has doubled compared with the early years of reform and opening up.However,with the shortage of domestic agricultural water and land resources and the rise of international trade protectionism,exploring the development of ‘Overseas Granaries' has become an important way for China to deal with the ‘tight balance' of food supply and guarantee the food security.On the Silk Road Economic Belt,Kazakhstan,which has close geographical advantages and abundant agricultural production endowments,will be one of China's partners for food security cooperation.The study of the spatio-temporal evolution of the Kazakhstan's grain production and its driving factors is the leading foundation task for China to explore overseas investment in grain production and trade cooperation.First,the article reviewed the related researches on the evolution of grain production and its influencing factors,explained the theories of evolutionary economic geography and agricultural production,and defined some related concepts such grain,production layout,and spatial-temporal evolution.Secondly,based on the analysis of the geographical location,administrative divisions,natural conditions of food production,and socio-economic development conditions of Kazakhstan,a qualitative comparison of the comparative advantages of grain production in various regions of Kazakhstan was analyzed.Thirdly,on the one hand,the statistical methods were used to analyze the time evolution characteristics of total grain production,yield and planting area of the whole country and different geographical and topographic regions during the year 2005 to 2017.On the other hand,the difference coefficients,the barycenter analysis method and spatial autocorrelation model was used to analyze the dynamic characteristics of spatial distribution and spatial clustering types of grain production in Kazakhstan.Fourth,the paper adopted the Factor Detector of Geo Detector to measure the affecting intensity of the main driving factors on the grain production changes across the country and different grain producing regions,Interaction Detector of Geo Detector was also used to explore the interaction mechanism of every two factors pairs.The main research conclusions are as follows:(1)The time evolving characteristics of grain production in Kazakhstan.(1)The total grain production of the country shows a two-phase cyclical movement and the average annual growth rate of that is 3.40%.Grain yield is the main reason affecting the total output.(2)From the perspective of geographical divisions,the north region's grain output accounted for more than 50% of the national total,but it was showing a downward trend.Meanwhile the proportion of grain production in the central region is increasing,and the grain output in the west is the lowest.(3)From the perspective of topographic divisions,the grassland area is the main grain production area,and its average grain production accounts for 79.16% of the country's total.Mountain and desert areas have a low proportion of food production,but they are increasing.(2)The spatial evolving characteristics of Kazakhstan's grain production.(1)The northern states maintained its grain production scale advantages during the research period.and the low yield areas are mainly distributed in the western area.High grain yield areas are mainly concentrated in the southern states,and the middle grain production areas have been converging to the central and eastern parts.(2)The national grain production space is highly heterogeneous,but it is decreasing in fluctuations.(3)The barycenter of grain production in Kazakhstan over the years has been concentrated in Akmola region,showing a spiral movement pattern of "from Southwest to Northeast and then back to Southwest",with the distance gradually decreasing.(4)Kazakhstan's agglomeration characteristics of grain production are significant and continue to increase.The high-high agglomeration areas for grain production expanded and then remained stable in the north regions.The low and low agglomeration areas were distributed in the west and shrank in fluctuations.On the whole,Kazakhstan's grain production distribution gradually became stable.(3)The main drivers factors and their mechanisms of changes in grain production:(1)The main drivers of national grain production differentiation changed from the fixed investment of agricultural and the area of cultivated land in 2005 to the average number of agricultural laborers and regional averages temperature in 2017.In the process of transformation,the driving effects of science and technology factors and economic and social factors has gradually decreased,while the driving effects of inputs factor and natural condition factors have gradually increased.(2)From 2005 to 2017,the main factors of spatial differences in major grain production area changed from input factors to policy,science and technology.Natural conditions factors have a relatively weak impact on the main producing areas.(3)The factors of all dimensions have a high impact intensity on the distribution of grain production in non-main producing areas in different periods.Among them,natural condition and input dimension factors have a greater effect.(4)The interaction between two and two factors can enhance the explanation of spatial differences in grain output,and most of them are two-factor enhancement and nonlinear enhancement types.Moreover,the interaction between the pairs of the same variable has different effects on the strength of different food production areas,and the driving mechanisms for the distribution of food production in different regions are different.Finally,based on the conclusions drawn in this thesis,it proposes enlightenments and suggestions for China's ‘Going Out' agricultural enterprises which plan to invest in the grain industries in Kazakhstan from the selection of investment target areas,the selection of investment businesses and the establishment of the grain industry chains.