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Developing high-value crop planting industries according to local conditions is an important strategy for targeted poverty alleviation, and it is also a momentous solution for agricultural structure adjustment. However, previous studies mainly have focused on their spatiotemporal evolution and economic benefits instead of their environmental impact. An in-depth analysis of high-value crop planting industries is urgently needed. Taking Linquan County as the research area, this study applied emergy and economic analyses to explore the differences among different high-value crop planting systems and wheat planting system from the perspectives of economic benefit, environmental impact and overall sustainability. The results showed that high-value crop planting systems provide more competitive economic profit than that of wheat planting. Despite the high economic benefits, the three highvalue crop planting systems intensify the purchased nonrenewable resource inputs and lead to higher environmental stress, especially the ginger planting system. Under the trade-off of economic benefit and environmental performance, peony planting is considered a promising pattern for further sustainable agriculture considering its synergistic development of photovoltaic power generation. Several policy incentives are suggested to increase the financial attractiveness of environmentally sound patterns and promote a virtuous cycle for future sustainable agriculture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]