Exploring provincial farmland use and demand through coupling production efficiency under domestic trade across China

Exploring farmland production efficiency and demand is helpful to realize the efficient, economical and intensive use of farmland. This study improved the farmland production efficiency evaluation system by incorporating both natural and anthropogenic indices, calculated the farmland use embodied in domestic trade, identified the realistic farmland demand under the assumption of no domestic trade and explored the potentiality of farmland demand reduction by considering the efficiency difference. The results showed that the farmland production efficiencies were high in the eastern coastal, mid-western and northern regions, while the efficiencies of some major grain-producing areas (MGPAs) were low. Embodied in domestic trade, compared with other areas, MGPAs undertook higher direct and indirect farmland use with lower production efficiencies. However, the realistic farmland demand of high-efficiency regions was lower than their initial farmland use area. By coupling production efficiency, the land-use pattern that high-efficiency regions provide farmland externally could create 7.49 × 10⁴ km² of farmland demand reduction potentiality for the whole country under the current domestic trade system. Some suggestions have been made to reduce the current farmland demand, such as improving the overall production efficiency by strengthening the management of natural elements input, narrowing the efficiency gap between regions by promoting agricultural technology progress, optimizing planting and industrial structure, and adjusting the policy of major grain-producing areas by rationally planning agricultural development and accelerating land transfer.