Continuing the continuous harvests of food production: from the perspective of the interrelationships among cultivated land quantity, quality, and grain yield

作者：Peng Cheng, Yang Zhang, Ke Liu, Xuesong Kong, Shiman Wu, Huafei Yan, Ping Jiang · 发表于：Humanities and Social Sciences Communications · 年份：2025 · DOI：10.1057/s41599-024-04342-1 · 被引用次数：21 · 研究领域：Agriculture Sustainability and Environmental Impact、Agricultural Systems and Practices

The rapid population growth around the world has become one of the main challenges for countries to ensure adequate food supply. To address this difficulty and ensure adequate food production, sustainable land use, in particular sustainable cultivated land (CL) use, can make a great contribution. Sustainable utilization of CL encompasses several aspects such as quantity and quality, but previous studies have focused on increasing food production, while the interrelationships among cultivated land quantity, quality, and grain yield (CLQQGY) have still received less attention. Hence, based on the GlobeLand30 data during 2000–2020, this paper analyzed the changes of CLQQGY in 130 prefecture-level cities in the Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB) in China and explored whether the current consecutive harvests is sustainable in the future to feed increasing population. The results revealed the areal loss and quality degradation of CL in most cities in the YREB, the total CL area decreased by 31.07 × 10 4 hm 2 and 282.59 × 10 4 hm 2 during 2000–2010 and 2010–2020, respectively, and the CL quality declining trend was presented in 68.46% and 69.23% cities in the YREB during 2000–2010 and 2010–2020, respectively. Even with such acreage and ecological losses, the total grain yield still increased by 3.77% and 9.53% during 2000–2010 and 2010–2020, respectively, continuing the miracle “continuous harvests” of grain yield in this region. This successive increase in food production in the co...