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Integrating crop redistribution and improved management towards meeting China’s food demand with lower environmental costs

Nature Food volume 3, pages 1031–1039 (2022)Cite this article

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Abstract

China feeds 19.1% of the world’s population with 8.6% of the arable land. Here we propose an integrated approach combining crop redistribution and improved management to meet China’s food demand in 2030. We simulated the food demand, estimated the national crop production through the productivity of the top 10% of producers in each county, and optimized the spatial distribution of 11 groups of crop types among counties using the data of the top producers. Integrating crop redistribution and improved management increased crop production and can meet the food demand in 2030, while the agricultural inputs (N and P fertilizers and irrigation water) and environmental impacts (reactive N loss and greenhouse gas emissions) were reduced. Although there are significant socio-economic and cultural barriers to implementing such redistribution, these results suggest that integrated measures can achieve food security and decrease negative environmental impacts. County-specific policies and advisory support will be needed to achieve the promises of combining optimization strategies.

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Fig. 1: Schematic flow of the China’s crop production strategy in the future.
Fig. 2: The estimated total crop and protein production for the reference years 2012 and 2018 and the demand and production (only protein, for two scenarios) for the target year 2030.
Fig. 3: The outcomes of the five optimizations and the average of the five outcomes relative to 2012.
Fig. 4: Crop configuration and effective crop diversity of each province between 2012 and optimization.
Fig. 5: Spatial variations of changes due to optimized crop distribution (the average of five optimization strategies) relative to 2012.

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Data availability

The national farmer survey and Nr loss observation dataset compiled for this study are available in the Data Repository on Zenodo (https://zenodo.org/record/7197615). Source data are provided with this paper. All other data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Code availability

All computer codes generated during this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge all those who provided local assistance and technical services involving the farmer survey. This work was financially supported by the Science and Technology Plan Project of Qinghai Province (2019-NK-A11-02), the Taishan Scholarship Project of Shandong Province (no. TS201712082) and Chinese Universities Scientific Fund (no. 2022TC036).

Author information

Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Zihan Wang, Yulong Yin.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Resources and Environmental Sciences, National Academy of Agriculture Green Development, Key Laboratory of Plant-Soil Interactions, Ministry of Education, China Agricultural University, Beijing, China

    Zihan Wang, Yulong Yin, Yingcheng Wang, Xingshuai Tian, Hao Ying, Qingsong Zhang, Fusuo Zhang & Zhenling Cui

  2. Maize Research Institute, Shandong Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Jinan, China

    Yanfang Xue

  3. Wageningen Environmental Research, Wageningen University and Research, Wageningen, the Netherlands

    Oene Oenema

  4. Beijing Jingwa Agricultural Science and Technology Innovation Center, Beijing, China

    Shengli Li

  5. Sino-France Institute of Earth Systems Science, Laboratory for Earth Surface Processes, College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, China

    Feng Zhou

  6. School of Public Policy and Administration, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, China

    Mingxi Du

  7. Key Laboratory of Agricultural Water Resources, Center for Agricultural Resources Research, Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shijiazhuang, China

    Lin Ma

  8. Biosystems Engineering Department, Auburn University, Auburn, AL, USA

    William D. Batchelor

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Contributions

Z.C., Y.Y. and Z.W. designed the study. Z.C. led the study. Z.W. and Y.Y. contributed to the method construction, data analysis and writing. Y.W., X.T., H.Y., Q.Z. and S.L. provided the emission data. Y.X., O.O., F.Z., M.D., L.M., W.D.B. and F.Z. have revised the study.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Zhenling Cui.

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Nature Food thanks Emily Burchfield, Xuesong Zhang and Liangzhi You for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Wang, Z., Yin, Y., Wang, Y. et al. Integrating crop redistribution and improved management towards meeting China’s food demand with lower environmental costs. Nat Food 3, 1031–1039 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-022-00646-0

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