The Distribution And Influencing Factors Of The Winter Wheat Production In Hebei Province

Hebei Province is one of the most important traditional agricultural provinces in China,wheat and maize are two important food crops in this province and winter wheat’s healthy and stable production is of great significance to the wheat industry and the national grain production.Hebei Province belongs to continental monsoon climate zone where with its serious shortage of the natural rainfall that is not suitable for winter wheat.The North China Plain has the largest underground funnel throughout the country due to decades of excessive extraction of groundwater for crop irrigation.With the increasing challenge of climate change and water shortage,sustainable and high efficient winter wheat production is becoming more and more important.Clear understanding of its influencing factors can provide essential basis for a smart winter wheat production policy and can be conducive to the production of food security and the sustainable use of resources in the province.The paper focuses on Hebei Province,one of the major province in North China with winter wheat production,annual records from 1998 to 2014 of each county in the whole province was used to analyze the distribution of yield variation of winter wheat along with its influencing factors.Its influencing factors include irrigated area,fertilizer use,pesticide use,the total power of farm machinery and other factors.The major winter wheat production area(consist of 101 counties defined as counties with winter wheat area more than 20% of total cropping area)in Hebei Province was selected,by hierarchical clustering analysis,principal component analysis,stepwise regression analysis,variance analysis and other multivariate statistical analysis to explain the spatial and temporal patterns of winter wheat production in selected area and its controlling factors,according to the comparative advantage theory and modified aggregated comprehensive comparative advantage index method to measure the comparative advantage of winter wheat,corn,soybeans,rice and other food crops.The main research conclusions are as follows:(1)As far as Hebei Province is concerned,the sown area of winter wheat decreased significantly in 1980-2014,but decreased significantly in the last two years.The trend of yield per unit area and total yield of winter wheat is basically same which is significantlyimprove with the time.(2)The winter wheat production of Hebei Province has aggregated comparative advantage,scale comparative advantage and also has efficiency comparative advantage.The analysis of comparative advantage of winter wheat,corn,soybean,rice and other grain crops and the suggested that winter wheat is the most productive food crops in the Hebei Province.(3)The distribution of winter wheat production between 1998-2014 is that the major winter wheat production area divided into 4 zones(Ⅰ — Ⅳ)by hierarchical clustering analysis using the maximum,minimum and average yield.The result showed that from zoneⅠ to zone Ⅳ,the averaged winter wheat yield decreased whereas the temporal yield variation increased significantly(P < 0.05).It indicated that it is more unstable in the lower yield area.Principal component analysis was conducted using the average and the variation indexes(minimum,maximum)of the agricultural variable concerning the winter wheat production,including irrigated area,the total horsepower of farm machine,fertilizer and pesticide consuming amount,as well as annual rainfall of each county.Six principal factors were derived representing factors of farm machine(F1),fertilizer(F2),irrigation area(F3),pesticide(F4),annual rainfall amount(F5)and minimum rainfall(F6).Based on the factor score values from these factor models,stepwise regression analysis model was developed for assessing the spatial variation of winter wheat yield as independent factor(Y).Model analysis showed that Y was significantly correlated with F1,F2,F3,F4,F6(R2 = 0.569,P <0.05)and these factors explained 56.9% of Y,in which fertilizer factor(F1)was the most important factor that explained 23.6%,irrigation factor(F3)explained 14.2%.Farm machine factor(F1),pesticide factor(F4)and annual rainfall factor(F6)partly explained 10.1%,4.7%and 4.2% of the whole model indicating that the minor impact of these factors on the spatial distribution of the winter wheat production in Hebei Province.(4)The regression analysis between the winter wheat yield and the proportion of winter wheat area to total crop acreage(F7)showed that F7 was generally coincidently changing with winter wheat yield among different counties(R2= 0.051,P < 0.05).Only a few counties to the very east of the low plain close to the coast belonging to zone Ⅳ with lowest winter wheat yield had F7 abnormally high.These results showed that the winter wheat production was basically proper arranged under the existing management mode.But under the serioussituation of fertilizer and water shortage,these abnormally high F7 with low yield spots may need careful examination to insure a healthy and sustainable high efficient cropping system.