ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Environ. Sci.
Sec. Environmental Economics and Management
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fenvs.2025.1597439
This article is part of the Research TopicClimate Change and Sustainable Food Security: Prospects and Challenges of Feeding 9 Billion PeopleView all 5 articles
Eco-efficiency and its determinants of major grain-producing areas in China
Provisionally accepted
- College of Management, Sichuan Agricultural University, Chengdu, China
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Accurately measuring the eco-efficiency of grain production and exploring ways to enhance it hold significant theoretical and practical value for promoting green agricultural development and achieving the “dual carbon” goals. This study evaluate the eco-efficiency of grain production in China by incorporating both carbon emissions and agricultural non-point source pollution as non-desired outputs. Using the SBM-Undesirable model and survey data from 1,208 farm households in main grain-producing areas, the average eco-efficiency score is estimated at 0.627, which is slightly above the threshold for acceptable performance. Notably, this score exceeds traditional production efficiency by 0.219, lending empirical support to the Porter hypothesis. The analysis reveals that eco-efficiency is positively associated with farmer age, household income, grain cultivation area, land quality, and membership in agricultural organizations, while it is negatively associated with household size, land fragmentation, replanting frequency, agricultural subsidies, outsourcing, and fixed productive assets. Regional heterogeneity analysis confirms the robustness of these findings, with only minor variations across different areas. These findings offer valuable insights into the factors shaping sustainable agricultural practices and suggest actionable pathways for improving eco-efficiency in grain production across China.
Keywords: Food security, Farmer behavior, SBM-Undesirable model, carbon emissions, Agricultural non-point source pollution
Received: 24 Mar 2025; Accepted: 24 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Chang, Chang, Yuan, Zhao, He, Tao and Li. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Yijin Li, College of Management, Sichuan Agricultural University, Chengdu, China
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