Spatiotemporal characteristics and influencing factors of the green total factor productivity of wheat in China

Abstract: Green transformation can be an inevitable requirement to ensure food security in China, particularly for the sustainable development and high quality of wheat production in recent years. Green Total Factor Productivity (GTFP) has been one of the most important indicators to measure economic and environmental efficiency. It is necessary to accurately evaluate the wheat production for the decision-making on the green transformation. Taking the 15 Provinces in China as the research objects, this study aims to investigate the spatiotemporal characteristics and influencing factors of wheat GTFP from 2004 to 2019 using the Slack-Based Measure (SBM) model with the Malmquist-Luenberger (ML) index. Among them, the non-desired outputs were set as the carbon emissions and the surface source pollution by chemical fertilizers and pesticides. A Panel Tobit model was also selected to empirically analyze the influencing factors of wheat GTFP in four aspects, including economic level, financial investment, resource endowment, and production conditions. The robustness of the model was then tested to add the control variables. The results show that there was an overall declining trend in the wheat GTFP from 2004 to 2019, indicating that the wheat production increased at the expense of environmental damage, due mainly to the technological regression. The 15 Provinces were classified into three categories in the spatial dimension, according to the wheat sown area and trends. The inter-regional comparisons demonstrated that the second production region (Shanxi, Inner Mongolia, Hubei and other provinces) was the most efficient level, the third region (Heilongjiang, Yunnan, Ningxia and other provinces) was the second, and the first region (Hebei, Jiangsu, Anhui and other provinces) was the least. The reason was that the third region was better served as the smallest sown area in wheat production, whereas, and the first region as the main wheat production area presented a higher yield with less consideration for ecological protection. Therefore, it was necessary to accelerate the wheat green production transition in the first region, which still remained the main production region of future wheat supply. In terms of influencing factors, the total wheat sown area and wheat sown area per capita posed the most significant impact on the GTFP, indicating that the wheat sown area was still concentrated in the first production area. However, green technology training increased for large-scale growers in recent years. The rural fixed investment and the minimum purchase price of wheat presented a negative impact on the GTFP, due to the improved yield and economic output with less concern for environmental protection. In addition, the technological progress was significantly more positive than the technological efficiency in response to all influencing factors, indicating a greater lacking of the new technologies promotion in the wheat industry system, compared with new technological research. Therefore, it was a high demand for the decision-making on the wheat industry support and protection in the practical needs of environmental protection under the sufficient yield. The coverage of fallow subsidies should be appropriately expanded to relieve the ecological pressure area in the first production. The promotion of new technologies can greatly contribute to enhancing technical proficiency in green production. The finding can provide a strong reference for the green transformation of wheat production.