Delineating historical and contemporary agricultural production regions for China

ABSTRACT

Chinese and western scholars have long drafted maps delineating China’s diverse agricultural regions. Historically, these agro-regionalization schemes were based on dominant crops, first-order soil groups, elevation, climatic variables, or some combination of these factors. However, rapid changes in supply chains, production systems and agro-technologies, including crop breeding, have significantly altered agricultural land use in recent years and blurred the boundaries of classical depictions of China’s agricultural regions. This article presents some of the most influential maps of this type for the past century, and adds a new map derived from 39 agricultural production variables selected using Principal Components Analysis (PCA) and aggregated using Ward’s hierarchical cluster analysis routine to create a final map of contemporary agricultural regions. This quantitatively derived map of agricultural production regions circa 2016 incorporates variables, such as gross production of key crops, rates of change for production, relative changes to sown area of all major crops and increased use of inputs, such as fertilizer and irrigation, and also includes two traditional classification variables: mean elevation of arable land by province and mean slope of farmland by province in recognition of geomorphological variations across the vast nation.

Les universitaires chinois et occidentaux ont depuis longtemps conçu des cartes délimitant les régions agricoles chinoises pour répondre aux besoins des planificateurs chargés de fournir suffisamment de nourriture et de fibres à la nation et pour informer le public et, plus récemment, ceux chargés de protéger l'environnement. Historiquement, ces cartes de régionalisation agricole étaient basées sur les cultures dominantes, les groupes de sols de premier ordre, l'altitude, les variables climatiques ou une combinaison de ces facteurs. Cependant, les changements rapides dans les chaînes d'approvisionnement, dans les systèmes de production et dans les technologies agricoles, y compris la sélection végétale, ont ces dernières années considérablement modifié l'utilisation des terres agricoles et ont brouillé les frontières des représentations classiques des régions agricoles chinoises. Cet article présente une sélection des cartes des régions agricoles qui ont été les plus influentes au siècle dernier et ajoute une nouvelle carte construite à partir de 39 variables de production agricole sélectionnées à l'aide de l'analyse en composantes principales (ACP) et agrégées à l'aide de la méthode de classification hiérarchique de Ward pour créer une carte de régions agricoles contemporaines. Cette carte quantitative des régions de production agricole, à partir de données correspondant environ à 2016, intègre des variables telles que la production brute des cultures majeures, les taux de renouvellement pour la production, les changements relatifs à la superficie ensemencée de toutes les principales cultures et l'utilisation accrue d'intrants tels que les engrais et l'irrigation. La classification intègre également deux variables de classification traditionnelles : l'élévation moyenne des terres arables par province et la pente moyenne des terres agricoles par province pour prendre en compte les importantes variations géomorphologiques de ce vaste pays.

KEYWORDS:

• China
• agricultural regions
• historical geography
• agriculture development
• crop production regions

Acknowledgements

Jason Glatz of the Cartographic Division of Waldo Library, Western Michigan University kindly completed the registration and redrafting of all historic maps in the publication to a common base map as well as contributing cartographic design of the final versions. I am grateful for his significant efforts to ‘get these right’! I would also like to thank the journal editors, and several anonymous reviewers for their usefrul comments that improved the methods of analyses and the final article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Gregory Veeck

Gregory Veeck is a professor in the Department of Geography at Western Michigan University (Kalamazoo, MI, USA) specializing in economic geography, agriculture, rural development, and rural environmental issues in China and Korea. He has served as a consultant to the Asian Development Bank on two agricultural development loan projects and on two World Bank Projects in Shanxi and Shaanxi Province while living and working in China for over seven years. His research has been funded by the National Academy of Sciences, American Philosophical Society, Sasakawa Foundation, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences-Rural Development Institute, Ford Foundation (1997), Fulbright-Hays Faculty Research Abroad Program (1995–1996), Fulbright Scholars Program (2006–2007), Government of Japan (2003, 2005), National Geographic Research Fund (1987, 2013), National Science Foundation (2006–2007), USDA (2003, 2014), and the World Wildlife Fund (1999). He is the author of several co-authored and edited volumes as well as over 50 refereed journal articles.