Spatial differences of specialty agriculture development in the mountainous areas of China -- "one village, one product" as an example

Zhenyu Huang; Minghong Tan

doi:10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e18391

Spatial differences of specialty agriculture development in the mountainous areas of China -- "one village, one product" as an example

Heliyon. 2023 Jul 18;9(8):e18391. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e18391. eCollection 2023 Aug.

Authors

Zhenyu Huang^{1

2}, Minghong Tan^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory of Land Surface Pattern and Simulation, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Beijing 100101, China.
² College of Resources and Environment, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China.

Abstract

With the rapid development of urbanization, the rate of abandonment of arable land in China's mountainous areas has accelerated. Solving the phenomenon of abandonment of arable land has become an important issue in managing the use of China's arable land, the key to which lies in the development of specialty agriculture using the unique natural environment of mountainous areas. This paper scrutinizes both the horizontal and vertical distribution of specialty agriculture in these areas, drawing upon the "One Village, One Product" dataset provided by the Chinese Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development. The findings reveal that the horizontal distribution pattern of specialty agriculture exhibits the formation of eight primary clusters. It is intriguing to observe that a majority of these clusters are situated at the intersection of two or three provincial administrative units, with the largest cluster occurring at the border of Chengdu and Chongqing. In terms of the vertical distribution pattern, the specialty agriculture in China's mountainous areas are mainly distributed at low altitudes, i.e., below 500 m, and at gentle slopes of 4°-8°, and with increases in altitude or slope, the overall amount of specialty agriculture declines rapidly.

Keywords: Mountain specialty agriculture; Spatial distribution; “One village One product”.