On Virtual Water Influencing Factors Of Grain Production In Ningxia

The shortage of water resources is a worldwide crisis.China’s per capita share of water resources far below the world level.The shortage of water resources handicaps the economy development,especially of grain producing.Ningxia is located in the northwest of China,where there is a serious shortage of water resources.In 2019,Ningxia’s agricultural water consumption accounts for more than 90%of the total water consumption,and the water intake from the Yellow River exceeds the quota by 54.79%.The contradiction between supply and demand of water for grain production is very prominent.Virtual water is the real use part of grain production.The virtual water consumption of Ningxia’s grain production only accounts for about half of the irrigation water,and there is still a large space to improve the water consumption of grain production.It is of practical significance to analyze the influencing factors of virtual water in Ningxia grain production,improve water use efficiency and optimize water allocation on the basis of ensuring grain production and output value,and alleviate the contradiction between supply and demand of water in grain production.Based on the theory of sustainable development and virtual water,this paper analyzes the current situation of virtual water in Ningxia grain production and consumption.This paper analyzed the virtual water influencing factors of grain production by using the panel data of 20 regions in Ningxia from 1995 to 2018 based on the spatial econometric model and including of natural,economic and technological factors.The results showed that the total virtual water consumption of grain production in Ningxia did not keep the same growth rate as the total grain production.The main reason is that the production scale of maize has been significantly expanded,which consumes less virtual water per unit.Economic factors represented by factors of production have greater influence than natural factors,while technological factors have the lowest influence.The influence of capital input is negative,the influence of labor input is positive,and the influence of sowing area is also positive.The influence of produetion scale is positive which the largest influence degree among economic factors.The natural factors represented by precipitation in cultivated area showed positive effect in the rice model,while showed negative effect in the wheat and maize models.Among the technical factors,the effect of virtual water content per unit of the three kinds of food crops is positive,and the effect of grain yield per unit area is also positive.But the effect of yield per unit area is much higher than the effect of grain production units consume virtual water.