Geographical displacement of arable land use for Yellow River regions via regional economic integration

Abstract

The continuing urbanization and economic integration in the Yellow River regions have characterized a new form of arable land use that can be displaced as commodity embodiment through trade connections. To enunciate whether the Yellow River regions utilize their arable land resources to feed China, this work investigates the geographical displacement of arable land use for the Yellow River regions via trades. Empirical evidence reveals that the Yellow River regions contribute over a quarter of China’s total traded arable land use in both intermediate and final trades. The arable land displacement related to exports in the Yellow River regions is quantified to grow by 1.4 times during the period studied. Particularly, the arable land use displaced from the Yellow River regions to the Yangtze River Delta equals around one-tenth of the national total traded volume. On the sectoral level, agriculture and food & tobacco sectors altogether contribute around over 60% of the exports of the Yellow River regions. The outcome demonstrates that the Yellow River regions obtain arable land use from regions with lower economic levels and feed affluent areas with land-intensive commodities. Under the context of economic integration, this regional imbalance of arable land use may be further aggravated by frequent interregional trades and needs special attention to realize ecological protection and high-quality development in the Yellow River regions.

Keywords

Arable land use / Yellow River regions / Regional economic integration / Temporal and spatial evolution / Commodity embodiment

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Funding

Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities(BLX202007)

National Natural Science Foundation of China(71904003)

Young Talent Promotion Project of China Association for Science and Technology(2020-2022QNRC002)