ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Sustain. Food Syst.
Sec. Land, Livelihoods and Food Security
Volume 9 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fsufs.2025.1614887
Spatial Coupling Mechanisms of Food Security and Regional Economies: Empirical Examination of Core-Periphery Dynamics in Jiangsu Province (2001-2024)
Provisionally accepted
- Yangzhou University, Yangzhou, China
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Amidst rapid industrialization and urbanization, reconciling food security imperatives with economic development objectives represents a critical global challenge. This study employs Jiangsu Province-an economically advanced Chinese region-as an empirical laboratory, integrating the Gini coefficient, concentration index, standard deviational ellipse, spatial exploratory analysis, and Spatial Durbin Model (SDM) to decipher spatiotemporal differentiation patterns of grain production and their spatial interactions with economic development. Results reveal: (1) pronounced spatial polarization with Northern Jiangsu consolidating as a High-High agglomeration core while Southern Jiangsu evolved into a Low-Low cluster, exhibiting expanding spatial divergence between economic and grain production centroids (125.4 km); (2) spatial econometric evidence confirming localized suppression of grain production by economic development alongside positive spillovers to neighboring regions, validating the core-periphery theory's complementarity proposition, whereas urbanization drove sown area contraction through labor migration and cropland conversion; (3) cultivated land endowment and rural labor as fundamental food security pillars, complemented by indirect production gains from industrial restructuring via land efficiency enhancements. Policy prescriptions include innovative spatial governance mechanisms, industrial feedback systems, Technology-Driven Resource Breakthrough strategy, and institutional rigidity, collectively establishing a replicable paradigm for developing economies navigating food security-economic growth synergies.
Keywords: Food security, Regional economy, Core-periphery structure, spatial Durbin model, Spatial spillovers
Received: 20 Apr 2025; Accepted: 26 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Yongqing, Jinhai and Yu. 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: Ben Yongqing, Yangzhou University, Yangzhou, China
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