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Air quality improvements can strengthen China’s food security

Nature Food volume 5, pages 158–170 (2024)Cite this article

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Abstract

Air pollution exerts crucial influence on crop yields and impacts regional and global food supplies. Here we employ a statistical model using satellite-based observations and flexible functional forms to analyse the synergistic effects of reductions in ozone and aerosols on China’s food security. The model consistently shows that ozone is detrimental to crops, whereas aerosol has variable effects. China’s maize, rice and wheat yields are projected to increase by 7.84%, 4.10% and 3.43%, respectively, upon reaching two air quality targets (60 μg m−3 for peak-season ozone and 35 μg m−3 for annual fine particulate matter). Average calories produced from these crops would surge by 4.51%, potentially allowing China to attain grain self-sufficiency 2 years earlier than previously estimated. These results show that ozone pollution control should be a high priority to increase staple crop edible calories, and future stringent air pollution regulations would enhance China’s food security.

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Fig. 1: AOT40 and AOD response functions for three crops.
Fig. 2: SIF changes between counterfactual and historical scenarios for three crops.
Fig. 3: Countrywide yield trends and averaged changes in observed and counterfactual scenarios during 2005–2019.
Fig. 4: Countrywide caloric contents and average changes in observed and counterfactual scenarios during 2005–2019.

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Data availability

All original source data are publicly available with details listed in Supplementary Table 3.

Code availability

The code used for preparing, modelling and generating results is available at https://github.com/XiangLiu-github/China_SIF_air_pollution_Code.

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Acknowledgements

This study was supported by the National Science Foundation of China (71921003 and 71974092; H.W.) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (14380031, 14380179 and 14380174; H.W.). We thank all the open-data providers and institutions for the data used in our study. We also thank the R package developers, especially the tidyverse (https://www.tidyverse.org/) and rspatial (https://github.com/rspatial/) communities.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Joint International Research Laboratory of Atmospheric and Earth System Sciences, School of Atmospheric Sciences, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China

    Xiang Liu, Bowen Chu, Rong Tang, Bo Qiu, Xin Huang, Aijun Ding & Haikun Wang

  2. State Key Laboratory of Pollution Control and Resource Reuse, School of the Environment, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China

    Yifan Liu

  3. Department of Geography, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong SAR, China

    Meng Gao

  4. Research Institute of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Seoul National University, Seoul, South Korea

    Xing Li

  5. Earth Systems Research Center, Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH, USA

    Jingfeng Xiao

  6. Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

    Haitong Zhe Sun

  7. Collaborative Innovation Center of Climate Change, Jiangsu Province, Nanjing, China

    Xin Huang, Aijun Ding & Haikun Wang

  8. Frontiers Science Center for Critical Earth Material Cycling, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China

    Xin Huang, Aijun Ding & Haikun Wang

  9. Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Madison, WI, USA

    Ankur R. Desai

  10. Nanjing-Helsinki Institute in Atmospheric and Earth Sciences, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China

    Aijun Ding & Haikun Wang

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  1. Xiang Liu
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Contributions

H.W. and X. Liu conceived and planned the study. X. Li and J.X. provided GOSIF data. M.G. provided ozone data. X. Liu processed the source data. X. Liu, B.C., R.T., Y.L., B.Q., M.G., X. Li, J.X., H.Z.S., X.H., A.R.D., A.D. and H.W. analysed the data and wrote the article.

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Correspondence to Haikun Wang.

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Supplementary Notes 1–9, Figs. 1–34, Tables 1–12 and References.

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Liu, X., Chu, B., Tang, R. et al. Air quality improvements can strengthen China’s food security. Nat Food 5, 158–170 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-023-00882-y

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