On the regional differences in agricultural water use efficiency in China and their convergence

Abstract

Lack of agricultural water resources and water pollution have become the two big challenges restricting the development of agriculture in China, so finding the ways to efficiently use agricultural water resources is of great significance. In view of this, based on the agricultural panel data of 30 provinces in China during the period from 2011 to 2017, this paper uses the SBM model which contains undesired output to evaluate the agricultural water use efficiency of each province, and applies the absolute β convergence method and conditional β convergence method to empirically examine the convergence characteristics of the provincial agricultural water use efficiency. According to the results, there are provincial differences in agricultural water use efficiency in China. Among all the provinces and municipalities, Beijing, Inner Mongolia, Liaoning, Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Shandong, Hainan, Chongqing, Yunnan, Shaanxi, Qinghai and Xinjiang achieved the optimal agricultural water use efficiency, while Hunan, Hubei, Heilongjiang, Jiangxi, Anhui and Shanxi did not perform well in terms of agricultural water use efficiency. The three major regions of China, namely East China, Central China and West China, showed very different trends - the agricultural water use efficiency was the highest in East China, followed by that in West China, and it was the lowest in Central China. Therefore, Central China is the key region where more efforts should be made in agricultural water conservation. The provincial agricultural water use efficiency exhibited absolute β convergence and conditional β convergence, showing a trend of low-efficiency provinces catching up with high-efficiency ones. In terms of the factors affecting agricultural water use efficiency, economic development level and agricultural water use intensity have significant negative impacts on agricultural water use efficiency, while crop planting structure significantly improves agricultural water use efficiency, and agricultural water conservancy construction and government financial support do not exert significant impacts.