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Dunhuang is not only one of the important agricultural regions in China, but also has formed a unique food custom through the integration of diverse cultures along the Silk Road, becoming a grain production base in the Western Regions. Ancient Dunhuang people explored the path of agricultural development in the long-term production practices, actively promoting agricultural production in the region, and transforming the agricultural production structure, leading to a shift in the mode of production. This paper aims to correctly understand the agricultural production characteristics and patterns of ancient Dunhuang and explore the impact of Dunhuang’s agricultural development on local culinary customs, providing an insight into the overall picture of ancient Dunhuang’s agricultural production and lifestyle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

COVID-19 has caused major disruptions to agricultural supply chains around the world. Researchers and policy-makers are interested in identifying means to reduce the disruptive effects caused by the pandemic. We investigate the impacts of COVID-19 on the operation of e-commerce stores (in short, e-stores) specialising in agricultural inputs. The difference-in-differences method (DID) is employed to estimate the causal relationship between COVID-19 and online sales of agricultural inputs using data from 54,244 agricultural input e-stores registered in 118 prefecture-level cities across 15 provinces and hosted on two major Chinese e-commerce platforms. The results show that COVID-19 led to a substantial growth in monthly sales of agricultural input e-stores, and this growth of online sales varied across store scales and by types of agricultural inputs. In particular, e-stores selling seeds and seedlings experienced a larger growth in sales than stores selling agricultural machinery and implements, and the mid-and larger-scaled e-stores experienced more growth of sales than micro-and small-scaled e-stores. Further analysis reveals that the growth of online sales of agricultural inputs was driven mainly by an increase in the quantity of customer orders (QCO). The findings of this paper underscore the importance of e-commerce in ensuring the resilience of the agricultural supply chain during the pandemic period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Maintaining crop outputs to feed its large population with limited resources while simultaneously mitigating carbon emissions are great challenges for China. Improving the efficiency of resource use in crop production is important in reducing carbon emissions. This paper constructs a methodological framework combining emergy-based indicator accounting and a nonseparable undesirable output slack-based measurement (SBM) data envelopment analysis (DEA) model. This framework is used to explore the efficiency of inputs and outputs and the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction potential for crop production systems, using Zhejiang province, China, as a case study. It is found that an emergy synthesis and a nonseparable undesirable output SBM-DEA framework is compatible with the case study. Crop production in Zhejiang province has relied heavily on an increase in agrochemical inputs to maintain agricultural output. Energy and chemical fertilizer use are determined as the province’s major carbon emissions sources. Although carbon emissions per unit of monetary output has decreased sharply, the carbon emissions per unit emergy output has increased, demonstrating a high carbon intensity reality. The DEA highlighted the differences in crop production efficiency, resource factor redundancy and carbon mitigation potential in the different prefectures of the province. To conclude this research, policies to support low carbon agriculture development, including subsidizing low carbon agriculture technology development and expansion and the cancellation of subsidies to high carbon production factors, such as chemical fertilizer production and sales, are discussed to conclude the research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The cultural differences caused by rice cultivation between the north and south of China provide a unique perspective to study the local effect on corporate pro-environmental behavior. In this paper, we investigate the relationship between the geographical distribution of agricultural planting and corporate pro-environmental behavior. We manually collected the city-level rice planting data and used A-share listed companies' data from 2010 to 2019 in China and found that rice culture in the external environment in which the company is embedded has a positive association with the corporate reactive pro-environmental behavior, while rice culture in the internal values which CEO provided with is positively related to the corporate proactive pro-environmental behavior. Moreover, we find that environmental policy and migration are two moderators through which rice culture affects corporate pro-environmental behavior. This study not only sheds light on the agricultural drivers behind corporate pro-environmental behavior and extends the theoretical understanding of how cultural differences caused by geographical factors within countries influence corporate decisions but also helps firms, managers, and stakeholders effectively conduct self-reflection, management, and supervision on environmental issues through farming cultural dimensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the situation of women left behind in villages when men out-migrate for work and what it implies for gender relations in rural China. It is based on questionnaire survey data that covers 400 left-behind women and extensive interviews in 10 rural communities. It reveals how the women take on multiple family responsibilities including mainly family care and agricultural production, and how they maintain their marital relationships in the context of a long separation. The discussion argues that even though the women's unpaid work becomes visible due to the absence of men in family life, there is a reaffirmation and reinforcement of gender traditions; women are more solidified in the unpaid and low-paid field of work in this new era of rural social transition in China. Moreover, separated married life has made women more vulnerable. In the end, it points to the fact that rural women are experiencing a new and deeper form of exploitation of their labour. Thus they are among those paying a heavy price for the development in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The conversion of farmland to forestland not only changes the ecological environment but also enriches the soil with organic matter and affects the global carbon cycle. This paper reviews the influence of land use changes on the soil organic carbon sink to determine whether the Chinese “Grain-for-Green” (conversion of farmland to forestland) project increased the rate of SOC content during its implementation between 1999 and 2010 in the hilly and gully areas of the Loess Plateau in north-central China. The carbon sink was quantified, and the effects of the main species were assessed. The carbon sink increased from 2.26×106 kg in 1999 to 8.32×106 kg in 2010 with the sustainable growth of the converted areas. The black locust (Robinia pseudoacacia L.) and alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.) soil increased SOC content in the top soil (0–100 cm) in the initial 7-yr period, while the sequestration occurred later (>7 yr) in the 100–120 cm layer after the “Grain-for-Green” project was implemented. The carbon sink function measured for the afforested land provides evidence that the Grain-for-Green project has successfully excavated the carbon sink potential of the Shaanxi province and served as an important milestone for establishing an effective organic carbon management program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vulnerability research is a new paradigm in the context of global environmental change and sustainable development. Taking vulnerability as a system's sensitivity to pressure and lack of adaptive capacity, this paper adopts territorial space as the research object and establishes a framework for assessing the vulnerability of territorial space from the viewpoint of ecological protection, agricultural production, and urban development as three major functional orientations. The framework consists of pressure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity assessment, as well as an index of 28 indicators, thus emphasizing the application of a comprehensive integration method for vulnerability assessment. Xingyang City, Henan Province, China was chosen as the study area, and the results showed that territorial space vulnerability on the basis of ecological protection, agricultural production, and urban development in 2018 was relatively stable, the identified vulnerable space constituting only about 12%, 9%, and 10%, respectively, of the total land in the study area. By analyzing the causes of the different levels of territorial space vulnerability, corresponding strategies for mitigating pressure, reducing sensitivity, and enhancing adaptive capacity were formulated. From the perspective of local governance, these strategies provide innovative analytical and technical methods for assessing the current status quo in spatial planning and for achieving sustainable development goals. Finally, we point out that research on territorial space vulnerability needs to gradually improve the conceptual framework and assessment indicator system, focus on further research on multiple scales and typical regions, and improve the guidance resulting from vulnerability research. • Carry out the research on the vulnerability of territory and space based on three functional orientations. • Deconstruct the territorial and spatial vulnerability from the pressure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity. • The territorial and spatial vulnerability on three functional orientations in Xingyang was relatively stable. • Innovative analytical and technical methods for assessing the current status quo in spatial planning were proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An agricultural production function is estimated using a Chinese county-level dataset along with associated geographic information. County-specific output-input elasticities are computed using the geographically weighted regression (GWR) and mapped with the geographical information system (GIS). A comparison of the ordinary least squares and GWR estimates confirms that allowing spatial variation in the parameters improves model fit of the agricultural production function, and provides valuable insights into the relative importance of inputs in different regions. Moran's indices reveal the spatial dependence of output per unit of land, and four inputs across regions. Mappings of GWR estimates help to detect a few clusters of high output-input elasticities: for labour in the Northeast, North, Southwest and Northwest China, for land in the Central and Southwest, for mechanical power in the North, Northwest and coastal area of the East and South and for fertiliser in the East. The county-specific scale elasticities suggest constant return to scale is likely to hold in the Central, East, Southwest and South. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]