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eISSN: 2083-5906
ISSN: 1230-1485
ISSN: 1230-1485
ORIGINAL RESEARCH
The Impact of Non-Grain Production
on Agricultural Ecological Efficiency:
A Blessing or a Curse?
1
College of Economics and Management, South China Agricultural University
2
School of Economics and Management, Jiangxi Agricultural University
Submission date: 2025-09-27
Final revision date: 2025-12-24
Acceptance date: 2026-01-19
Online publication date: 2026-03-04
KEYWORDS
TOPICS
ABSTRACT
Food security is crucial to a nation’s survival and development, yet the shift of cultivated land toward
non-grain crops has led to a reduction in both the area and quality of farmland, while also potentially
exerting a negative impact on the agricultural environment. The increase in agricultural production
and farmers’ income has laid a solid foundation for ensuring food security. However, agricultural
production methods that come at a high cost to resources and the environment have profound negative
impacts on the ecological environment. Agricultural ecological efficiency (AEE) serves as a crucial
indicator for assessing the efficiency of agricultural resource utilization and environmental pressure.
Research on AEE can provide valuable insights for the government in formulating agricultural policies.
As China’s agricultural structure undergoes transformation, the phenomenon of non-grain production
(NGP) is becoming increasingly prominent, posing challenges to the ecological environment.
This paper aims to evaluate the ecological sustainability of China’s agricultural sector and analyze
the challenges posed by NGP to AEE. Based on field survey data from Jiangxi Province, this paper
employs the super-efficiency SBM model, treating agricultural pollution as an undesirable output,
to measure AEE. We construct an endogenous switching model and a mediation model to explore
the impact of NGP on AEE. The average AEE of the sampled farmers was 0.363, indicating significant
room for improvement. NGP significantly reduced AEE; farmers engaged in NGP exhibited a 40.90%
decrease in efficiency compared to a hypothetical scenario of grain-oriented production. Mechanism
analysis revealed that NGP led to reduced adoption of socialized services, increased agricultural labor
input, and higher usage of agricultural pollutants, thereby lowering AEE. Therefore, mitigating the
negative impacts of NGP requires systematic interventions, such as increasing the supply of socialized
services, optimizing labor allocation, and reducing the application of chemicals.
CONFLICT OF INTEREST
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
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| ISSN: | 1230-1485 |
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