Cultivated land is the carrier of food production. As a populous country that regards cultivated land as the most valuable strategic resource, China has faced the challenge of the phenomenon of non-grain production of cultivated land (NGP) in recent years, which has attracted great attention from the Chinese government. Based on the cultivated land and grain data at the plot scale in 2000, 2010, and 2019, this study explored the evolutionary characteristics and spatial pattern of NGP in the Guanzhong Plain of Shaanxi Province from 2000 to 2019 with the Geographic Information System spatial analysis. The study found a clear trend in the spatial expansion of NGP in the past 20 years. In the 54 counties and districts of Guanzhong, there were different degrees of NGP, showing an annual expansion trend. The spatial agglomeration effect of NGP was significant. This study has important scientific value in understanding the phenomenon and patterns of non-grain production of cultivated land in China and provides a scientific basis for the formulation of cultivated land management policies.

China has implemented strict policies for protecting cultivated land, and the Chinese government has focused on the non-grain production (NGP) of cultivated land. This study aimed to analyze the spatial evolution law of grain-producing cultivated land (GPCL) in China between 2000 and 2018, explore the mechanism of GPCL, and simulate the spatial characteristics of GPCL in 2036. We used the Geographic Information System (GIS) and a patch-generating land-use simulation model, a new model that proposes a land expansion analysis strategy by improving previous rule-mining methods. China’s grain production rate (GPrate) shows a gradual upward trend between 2000 (36.98%) and 2018 (47.18%). The mutual conversion of GPCL and non-grain-producing cultivated land (NGPCL) are the primary transfer types. The evolution of GPCL is driven by climatic, economic, and social factors, of which population density is the most important factor. GPCL expansion patches are distributed in densely populated, economically developed, and warm and humid plain areas. Further, the simulation results showed that the GPrate in 2036 is estimated to be 41.39%, with GPCL transfer-in significantly exceeding the amount transferred out. Our results further cultivated land evolution-associated research and provide a basis for formulating scientific land-use policies for cultivated land protection for other countries.

Climate change, greenhouse gas emissions, and food security have put forward higher requirements for sustainable agricultural development. Agricultural ecological efficiency (AEE) is an important indicator to evaluate the sustainable development of agriculture. Low carbon agriculture promotes sustainable agricultural development. Agricultural carbon sinks are an important output of agricultural production, but they have not been fully reflected in the current research on agricultural ecological efficiency. In this study, agricultural carbon sinks are considered as one of the expected outputs of AEE. The data envelopment method was used to measure the AEE of 31 provincial-level administrative regions in China from 2000 to 2019, and the AEE of China was compared with and without carbon sinks. The Gaussian kernel function was used to estimate the time evolution of regional differences in AEE. A geodetector model was used to detect the drivers of spatial differentiation of AEE in China. The results showed that considering agricultural carbon sinks as one of the expected measurement outputs brings the estimated AEE closer to reality. From 2000 to 2019, China’s AEE showed an upward trend, and the efficiency value increased from 0.48 to 0.95, an increase of 97.92%. The spatial distribution pattern of AEE in China was Northeast > West > Central > East, with obvious differences among provinces. The industrialization level, urban‒rural gap, agricultural economic level, agricultural disaster rate, and urbanization level were the leading driving forces for the spatial differentiation of AEE in China. The research will help to reveal the dynamic characteristics, spatial differentiation characteristics, and driving factors of China’s agricultural ecological efficiency, and provide a scientific reference for the realization of sustainable agricultural development and high-quality development.

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