Spatiotemporal differentiation characteristics and driving factors of agricultural green development in the Yellow River Basin from a county perspective

The report of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China put forward that “promoting green development, accelerating the green transformation of the development mode, and promoting the formation of green and low-carbon production and lifestyle are the essential requirements of Chinese path to modernization”. In the context of implementing the new development concept and actively promoting the “Dual Carbon” goals, the development of county-level agriculture was closely related to ecological security. Therefore, there is an urgent need to strengthen the attention paid to green agricultural development at county level and consolidate the foundation for achieving ecological civilization construction. Agricultural green development is an important measure to modernize agriculture and rural areas and promote the high-quality development of agriculture. The Yellow River Basin has an extremely important strategic position as an important ecological barrier and core area for grain production in China. This study aimed to explore the spatiotemporal differentiation characteristics and driving factors of agricultural green development in the Yellow River Basin from a county perspective to provide more green resources and policies to focus on key areas and weak links of agricultural development in the Yellow River Basin and scientifically and effectively promote agricultural green development. This study used the game theory combination weighting method to construct an agricultural green development index. Based on econometric methods, such as kernel density estimation, standard deviation ellipse, spatial Markov chain, and spatial autocorrelation, we empirically analyzed the spatiotemporal differentiation characteristics, dynamic evolution, and spatial effects of agricultural green development in the Yellow River Basin. A spatiotemporal geographical weighted regression model was used to explore driving factors. The research found the following: 1) In terms of the time dimension, the overall level of green agricultural development in the Yellow River Basin showed an upward trend from 2011 to 2020. The absolute difference in agricultural green development between counties gradually narrowed. From a watershed perspective, the level of agricultural green development showed a downstream>midstream>upstream distribution trend. 2) From a spatial perspective, the agricultural green development level in the Yellow River Basin presented a spatial distribution pattern of “low in the northwest and high in the southeast”, and the agricultural green development level in each county had a significant positive spatial correlation, with spatial spillover effects. 3) In terms of driving factors, economic factors had a strong driving effect on the agricultural green development throughout the Yellow River Basin, while social factors had a strong driving effect on the agricultural green development in the middle and upper reaches of the Yellow River Basin. This study actively promotes the systematic engineering of agricultural green transformation, effectively promotes the coordinated development of “emission reduction” and “efficiency enhancement” in the process of green agricultural production, establishes a coordinated mechanism for agricultural green development, constructs an efficient and orderly distribution pattern for green agricultural development, comprehensively solves the problem of imbalanced and insufficient agricultural green development in the Yellow River Basin, adapts to local conditions, and leverages economic and social factors to optimize the allocation of resource elements for green agricultural development.