Evolution Trends in Carbon Emissions and Sustainable Development Paths in China’s Planting Industry from the Perspective of Carbon Sources

Xuenan Zhang, Caibo Liu, Jinxin Zhang (), Juntong Liu and Wanling Hu
Additional contact information
Xuenan Zhang: School of Business, Hubei University, Wuhan 430062, China
Caibo Liu: School of Business, Hubei University, Wuhan 430062, China
Jinxin Zhang: School of Business, Hubei University, Wuhan 430062, China
Juntong Liu: School of Business, Hubei University, Wuhan 430062, China
Wanling Hu: School of Economics and Management, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan 430070, China

Sustainability, 2025, vol. 17, issue 6, 1-18

Abstract: Reducing agricultural carbon emissions is key to promoting the sustainable development of agriculture. Carbon sources play a significant role in the carbon emissions of China’s planting industry. Researching the principles of evolutionary trends of carbon sources regarding carbon emissions in China’s planting industry helps formulate scientific policies to control such emissions in the industry. This paper adopted an emission factor approach from the IPCC to estimate the CO 2 emissions of all kinds of carbon sources in China’s planting industry from 1997 to 2017. On the basis of the data, the principles of dynamic evolution in China’s planting industry and six carbon sources were analyzed by the kernel density estimation approach. Notably, the study discovered that carbon emissions peaked in 2015. In terms of the contributions of various carbon sources to the carbon emissions of the planting industry, sorted by chemical fertilizers, agricultural diesel oil, agricultural films, pesticides, agricultural irrigation, and seeding, their contribution rates were 60.82%, 13.95%, 12.88%, 9.83%, 1.88%, and 0.64%. At the same time, the kernel density results show that there was an increasing trend in carbon emissions across the whole of China’s planting industry and six kinds of carbon sources nationwide, with apparent “multipolarization”. From the perspective of various regions, the carbon emissions of chemical fertilizers, diesel oil, films, and pesticides in China’s planting industry had an evolutionary trend of multipolarization in central regions, while there was an evolutionary trend of monopolarization in eastern and western regions. The carbon emissions of seeding and irrigation had a similarly evolutionary trend in eastern, central, and western regions. Basically, they all had a double increase pattern in carbon emissions and regional differences. Therefore, China’s government needs a target to set up long-term mechanisms to ensure a stable and orderly reduction in carbon emissions in the planting industry, leading its development from the traditional planting industry to a climate-smart planting industry.

Keywords: carbon sources; planting industry; carbon emissions; kernel density analysis; multipolarization; sustainable development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/17/6/2772/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/17/6/2772/ (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:17:y:2025:i:6:p:2772-:d:1616694

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 ().