Telecoupling Effects among Provinces of Cultivated Land Grain Production in the Last 30 Years: Evidence from China

Abstract

Telecoupling interregional resource interaction based on cultivated land grain production (CLGP) plays a crucial role in ensuring national food security and advancing sustainable socio-environmental and economic development. Based on the provincial panel data of 31 administrative regions in China from 1990 to 2020, we used the spatial and temporal evolution of CLGP and the global Moran index to detect the spatial correlation of CLGP among the provinces in China; we adopted the SDM to study the telecoupling effect of CLGP among the provinces in China and decompose the effect, enabling us to propose policy recommendations for enhancing the telecoupling effect among the provinces. The results are as follows: (1) China’s inter-provincial CLGP has shown an increasingly strong telecoupling effect over time, further validating the scientific nature of China’s grain production pattern. (2) Cultivated land, irrigation area, the number of agricultural employees, the power of agricultural machinery, the proportion of grain sown, and total grain production have positive “flow” effects on spatial teleconnections between provinces and regions. (3) In terms of the total telecoupling effect, the most significant factor affecting CLGP is the ratio of the area sown with grain to the total area sown with crops. Meanwhile, the area of cultivated land in each region, the irrigated area, the agricultural labor force, the agricultural machinery total power, and the percentage of grain sowing in each region have the most direct telecoupling effect on CLGP. The conduct of the study further fleshes out the empirical research on interregional resource telecoupling linkages arising from resource deployment and utilization.