Exploring regional ecological compensation of cultivated land from the perspective of the mismatch between grain supply and demand

Maintaining the supply of multiple ecosystem services of cultivated land is directly concerned to the sustainable development of human society. The ecological compensation of cultivated land is an important measure which has been major strategy to promote ecological protection of cultivated land and ensure food security in China. Although the cultivated land is immovable, when the grain transfer from surplus to poor areas, the cultivated land resources are reallocated and the corresponding ecosystem services are spilt. This paper constructs a model to quantify cultivated land resources flows hidden in the grain, calculates the compensation standard, and quantifies the compensation amount by building the eco-compensation mechanism. The typical integrated region in China, the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) was selected as the study area. The results show that (1) cultivated land resources in the YRD appear the characteristics of outflow in 24 cities and inflow in 17 cities, which means the former is the recipient and the latter is the payer of eco-compensation. (2) Generally, the developed cities have much more outflow of cultivated land resources than the developing cities in the YRD. And the city of Shanghai and Hangzhou, which are the best economic developed cities in the YRD, transfers into most grain and cultivated land. (3) Paddy field and dry farmland have different eco-value, so the compensation is different, respectively. Our study can enrich the perspective of cultivated land eco-compensation and proposes policy implications for improving the eco-compensation mechanism and realizing multifunctional ecological protection of cultivated land in China.