Green Total Factor Productivity Growth of Rice in China: Spatiotemporal and Evolutionary Patterns

This study aimed to unravel the spatiotemporal characteristics and evolutionary patterns of growth in green total factor productivity (GTFP) in rice production, with a view to exploring synergistic pathways for increasing yield while reducing carbon emissions, thereby supporting the transition toward higher-quality and more efficient rice industry development.

Based on panel data from 23 provinces from 2006 to 2023, this study constructed a GTFP measurement system and comprehensively employs methods, such as life cycle assessment, super-efficiency SBM-GML model, convergence model, kernel density estimation, and Markov chain to investigate the spatiotemporal characteristics and dynamic evolution patterns of GTFP growth in rice with different cropping systems in China.

(1) Double cropping rice demonstrated a pattern of "increasing production, reducing carbon emissions, and enhancing carbon sinks", while the improvement of "carbon sinks effect" in single cropping rice lagged behind "carbon reduction effect". (2) The GTFP of both rice types showed an upward trend. Double cropping rice had a faster average annual growth rate. Rice in Central China has the most maintained high GTFP levels. Heilongjiang, Chongqing, Sichuan, and Shaanxi had long the GTFP of the two types of rice but face constraints in GTFP growth. (3) There wasσ-convergence in significant GTFP growth. Among the regions where single cropping rice was planted, only the GTFP in the Northeast showed σ-convergence. In the Central China and South China regions, double cropping rice was planted, there was σ-convergence. Both types of rice exhibited significant absolute β-convergence and conditional β-convergence nationwide and in various regions. (4) The phenomenon of multi-polar differentiation in GTFP growth tended to weaken, but regional disparities remained large. Regions with a high level of GTFP growth had a radiating and driving effect on regions with a low level.

Policy recommendations were put forward, including formulating differentiated strategies to promote carbon reduction for different rice, constructing a regional collaborative framework for enhancing rice production capacity and green development, and exploring the establishment of a cross-regional collaborative mechanism for diffusing green rice production technologies.