Energy consumption of China’s crop production system and the related emissions

This research explored the relationships between the energy use and economic output and pollution emissions in China’s crop production system during 1995–2011. A set of indicator system based on energy and money and quality were proposed to describe these complex interactions between them. The results show that (1) Productivity of crop production system in China has been obviously enhanced through limited manpower inputs. However, this case leads to increasing share of fossil energy related agricultural supplies in the total agricultural investment. Moreover, fossil energy has an increasing contribution to the total energy use, which makes pollution emissions derived from fossil energy production and use become the largest contributor to the total emissions, especially thermal power production. Meanwhile, direct emissions from fuel energy use should be also emphasized. In terms of emission amount, thermal power and fertilizers production has the largest impact on atmospheric environment; thermal power production also contributes the largest to solid wastes; fuel oil production has the largest effect on the water environment; (2) the emission intensity of energy consumption in China’s crop production system has risen; (3) the structure coordination degree of crop production system in China has been greatly enhanced; however, its scale harmony degree has no obvious changes. Therefore, the sustainability of China’s crop production system is being challenged by unreasonable energy mix, high emission intensity of energy consumption and bad scale harmony degree. Finally, the related issues are discussed and some beneficial suggestions are put forward.