Spatiotemporal variation and evaluation of agriculture green development: a case study of Hainan Province, China

Highlights

● Knowledge of the quantitative evaluation of changes in agriculture green development (AGD) is currently insufficient at the regional scale.

● Progress and potential pathways towards AGD in Hainan Province were assessed.

● The AGD index for Hainan Province improved from 38.8 in 1988 to 40.9 in 2019.

● Optimized nutrient management and diet structure improved the AGD index significantly.

● This approach can be used to assess the effects of future policies.

Abstract

The realization of green and sustainable development of agriculture is the common pursuit all over the world. Agriculture green development (AGD) program has been proposed as a sustainable development strategy in China, but insufficient is known about the quantitative evaluation of spatiotemporal variation in AGD at the regional scale. This study aimed to assess spatiotemporal patterns in AGD at the county/city-based regional level. For this purpose, a systematic index evaluation system was developed to assess the performance of socioeconomic, food production and environmental components in a key economic region (Hainan Province) of China. Hainan improved its AGD index (representing the overall performance toward achieving AGD) from 38.8 in 1988 to 40.9 in 2019. The socioeconomic development and agricultural productivity have improved with time; environmental quality declined due to overuse of chemicals from 1988 to 2013, but steadily improved after 2013, indicating positive effects of reducing chemical input. There was a higher AGD index in the coastal vs. central regions and the southern vs. northern regions. Scenarios featuring improved nutrient management or optimized diet structure and reduced waste improved economic benefits and social productivity while concurrently reducing environmental degradation. These results provide new insights for the future development of green and sustainable agriculture and formulation of agricultural policies in Hainan Province of China and even other developing countries that are facing or will soon face similar challenges.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

Agriculture / environmental impact / green and sustainable development / Hainan Province / index evaluation system

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Supplementary materials

The online version of this article at https://doi.org/10.15302/J-FASE-2024538 contains supplementary materials

Acknowledgements

We thank the Hainan Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China (321CXTD443), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (32130094), the Project of New Fertilizer Research and Development of Yun-Tian-Hua Group of Yunnan of China (YTH-4320-WB-FW-2021-031303-00), the project of Beijing’s Advanced Disciplines on Agriculture Green Development, the Science and Technology Project of Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, and the 2115 Talent Development Program of China Agricultural University for financially supporting this work.

Compliance with ethics guidelines

Tianxiang Yu, Jichen Zhou, Lin Ma, Fusuo Zhang, Zed Rengel, William J. Davies, and Jianbo Shen declare that they have no conflicts of interest or financial conflicts to disclose. This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

The Author(s) 2024. Published by Higher Education Press. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)