Does Fallowing Cultivated Land Threaten Food Security? Empirical Evidence from Chinese Pilot Provinces

Qingyuan Yang, Renhao Yang, Yahui Wang and Kaifang Shi
Additional contact information
Qingyuan Yang: School of Geographical Sciences, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, China
Renhao Yang: Division of Geography and Tourism, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, KU Leuven, 3001 Leuven, Belgium
Yahui Wang: School of Geographical Sciences, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, China
Kaifang Shi: School of Geographical Sciences, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, China

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 11, issue 10, 1-17

Abstract: Facing worsening problems, including the decreasing amount, quality, and deterioration of land ecosystems, cultivated land needs protective measures. China has been conducting an experimental fallow policy to deter these problems in five pilot provinces since 2016. However, inadequate and inconclusive studies of the impacts of fallow policy on food security have motivated the authors to fill this knowledge gap and to provide evidence for policy-making. Using the modified cultivated land pressure model, this study explores the cultivated land pressure at three scales (nation, province, and prefecture) to determine the capacity of feeding people using cultivated land, and examines the impact of fallowing cultivated land. There are three main findings. First, the cultivated land pressure in China continually decreased during the period of 2000–2016, and would remain in a decreasing trend during 2017–2020 even if the measures implemented doubled the fallowing scale every year. Second, the spatial patterns of the cultivated land pressure between the provincial and prefectural scale show a similar overview, with some nuanced disparities. Finally, the five pilot provinces show various amplitudes of variation in cultivated land pressure, ranging from 0.017% to 9.027% under three fallow scale scenarios. Thus, the results of this research support the argument that fallow policy will not threaten food security at a national and provincial scale, based on the current fallow scale and enlargement pace. The deeper understanding of the impact of fallow policy provides a scientific reference for policymaking and calls for further studies focusing on a more comprehensive measurement of cultivated land pressure and optimization fallow scale.

Keywords: temporal change; spatial change; scenarios simulation; amplitudes of variation; policy impact; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/10/2836/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/10/2836/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:11:y:2019:i:10:p:2836-:d:232301

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().