Toward Low-Carbon Agriculture: Factor Decomposition and Decoupling Analysis of Agricultural Carbon Emissions in Northeast China

Chemical fertilizer inputs in China peaked in 2015; however, agricultural carbon emissions continue to rise, and the effect of chemical fertilizer inputs on agricultural carbon emissions remains unclear in this context. This paper aims to offer a useful policy reference for low-carbon agriculture based on agrochemical inputs. Taking northeast China as an example, we incorporated chemical fertilizers as a factor in the generalized Divisia index model (GDIM) and conducted a decoupling analysis using a decoupling effort index (DEI) on data from 2000 to 2020. The factor decomposition results indicate that the chemical fertilizer input scale served as a driving factor with a declining trend, and carbon productivity from chemical fertilizer shifted from an inhibiting effect to a driving effect on agricultural carbon emissions. The results of integrating the GDIM with a DEI indicate that reducing chemical fertilizer inputs and exerting the inhibiting effect of carbon productivity from chemical fertilizer both contribute to effective decoupling.