Spatiotemporal differentiation characteristics of agricultural modernization in Guanzhong Plain

Agricultural modernization has been the overwhelming trend as the rapid growth of the economy in recent years. Taking the Guanzhong Plain, Shaanxi Province, China as the study area, a systematic analysis was made on the spatial differentiation and influence mechanism of agricultural modernization level, particularly for the regional economic development, urban-rural integration, and ecological environment construction. There was the regional difference of agricultural modernization in the grain-producing area, where the Weihe River running from the west to East offered the favorable irrigation conditions suitable for crop planting. An evaluation index system of regional agricultural modernization was constructed from the four dimensions, including agricultural production, economic income, talents, and ecology. The temporal and spatial variation and influencing factors were proposed for the development level of agricultural modernization using AHP, entropy weight method, global Moran's I index model, and Sellers Discretionary Earnings (SDE) method. The results showed that: 1) The level of agricultural modernization was high in the middle and low in the west from 2010 to 2020, indicating a rapid and slow upward trend as a whole. It infers a developed stage in agricultural modernization. 2) The improvement intensity of agricultural production and output level was relatively large and continued to rise, whereas, there was a backward development of talents and agricultural ecology. 3) The relative development intensity of regional agricultural modernization presented the trend of "balanced development bipolar development" in time and space. The development capacity of each county changed from a small to a significant difference, particularly depending on the type of regional modern agriculture. 4) There were the spatial characteristics of the aggregation mode. The development pattern showed the weakening directionality and the migration of development focus to the southeast, but the spatial pattern was still dominated by the east-west. 5) There were outstanding spatiotemporal grades and relative development intensity of agricultural modernization, indicating the consistent trends of spatiotemporal changes. The development intensity of agricultural modernization in the districts and counties was related to the type of modern agriculture. The regional economic level, policy system, and natural conditions of agricultural production posed a great impact on the agricultural modernization pattern. Two suggestions were proposed to realize the regional agricultural modernization. First, the agrochemical products can be cut down to promote the agricultural and ecological environment. Second, the green production mode was integrate the three industries. A new business or production mode can integrate the technical potentials in the other industries and industrial chain nodes, in order to improve the agricultural production level and output capacity in sustainable agricultural mechanization.