The Evolution and Influencing Factors of Total Factor Productivity of Grain Production Environment: Evidence from Poyang Lake Basin, China

Abstract

The total factor productivity (hereafter TFP) of grain production is important to achieve balanced development, while environmental factors are an important part of TEP. In order to explore the characteristics and patterns of the temporal and spatial evolution of the environmental total factor productivity (hereafter ETFP), the Malmquist-Luerberger index, and the spatial autoregressive panel (SAR panel) model were adopted to analyze the evolutionary rules and the influencing factors of ETFP. In this study, we took Poyang Lake, one of China’s main grain production areas, as a study area, and carried out empirical research based on grain production statistical data. The results show that: (1) ETFP shows a growth trend with the increase of grain production from 2001 to 2017, and a great potential for improvement exists. Moreover, from the perspective of time sequence evolution and decomposition of ETFP, which belongs to the dual-track driver of environmental technical efficiency and environmental technological progress, relevant technologies play an important role in promoting the improvement of TEFP; (2) Given that the objective conditions of gain production remain unchanged, the fact that the urbanization rate and average annual rainfall have a negative effect on ETFP, the explanatory variables such as the business scale per worker, the proportion of grain growing population, industrial agglomeration, the proportion of grain sown area and the average annual temperature all play a positive role. Among the variables, the business scale per worker and the proportion of grain growing population significantly affect ETFP at the 1% level. The average annual rainfall, industrial agglomeration and the proportion of grain sown area significantly affect the ETFP at the 5% level. The average annual temperature significantly affects the ETFP at the 10% level.