Dynamic evolution and driving effects of carbon emissions from grain production in China

Ensuring food security under the "double carbon" goal is an important issue for China to tackle climate change and build a community of human life. This paper employs the life cycle assessment method to gauge the grain production carbon emissions in China and its 31 provincial-level regions from 1997 to 2020, and uses the Dagum Gini coefficient, standard deviation ellipse and kernel density methods to explore the dynamic evolution characteristics. It further identifies the underlying factors of China's grain production carbon emissions, as well as their spatio- temporal impacts, under a comprehensive, period- based, and regional- level decomposition perspective. The results show that: (1) During the inspection period, China's total carbon emissions from grain production showed an upward trend, with an annual growth of 1.30%, yet since 2017 it has been in a continuous downward trajectory. Material inputs and straw burning account for the lion's share of emissions. The total carbon emissions in 2020 amounted to 494.78 million tons. (2) With regard to the three major grain production functional areas and six grain crop planting system areas, the carbon emissions of grain production in the main grain production areas, the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River and North China provinces have been in the forefront during the investigation period, while those in the main grain sales areas have displayed a diminishing trend. (3) The absolute difference of China's grain production carbon emissions enlarged manifesting as a tendency of high level convergence and widening of regional disparities. (4) China's grain production carbon emissions are jointly affected by economic, social, technological, demographic and natural factors. With gross agricultural output value and gross grain output serving as the key influential factors, they display negative spatial spillover effects; meanwhile, regional economic structure, labor saving technology, and agricultural production composition demonstrate diametrically opposite effects. The stage effect takes the 11th Five- Year Plan period (2006-2010) as the node, and the driving factors tend to be simplified. In the regional effect, the driving factors from the main sales area, the main production area to the balanced production and marketing area tend to be complex. This study provides a theoretical and methodological basis for promoting green grain production under the "dual carbon" strategy. © 2023 Science Press. All rights reserved.