Evaluation of Cultivated Land Use Efficiency with Environmental Constraints in the Dongting Lake Eco-Economic Zone of Hunan Province, China

The rapid urban and industrial development in China has put pressure on the limited cultivated land resources. In ecologically fragile areas, such as the Dongting Lake Eco-economic Zone, land pollution and waste emissions from agricultural production cause irreversible damage to cultivated land. Thus, a method to assess the sustainability of cultivated land use efficiency (CLUE) is explored. Using the panel data of 25 districts in the province from 2007 to 2017, this study incorporates agricultural non-point source pollution and carbon emissions into undesirable outputs of cultivated land. The SBM(Slack-based Measure)-undesirable model was applied to measure the spatiotemporal characteristics of CLUE under environmental constraints. This study finds that CLUE with environmental constraints is significantly lower than CLUE without environmental constraints, and the degree of the impacts of the constraints differs among regions. Second, from 2007 to 2017, the average CLUE of the province showed a downward trend in each year; this is due to the side effects of redundant inputs and undesired outputs. Third, in 2017, the CLUE of the Dongting Lake Eco-economic Zone was high in the west and low in the east, and the redundant inputs of CLUE were livestock, fertilizer, and pesticide. The study concludes by recommending some policies.