The Impacts of Rapid Urbanization on Farmland Marginalization: A Case Study of the Yangtze River Delta, China

Farmland is the most precious natural resource and the primary source of food for human beings. Urbanization not only occupies a large amount of farmland spatially, but also economically squeezes agricultural production, resulting in farmland marginalization and causing serious threats to food security. However, the manner in which rapid urbanization drives farmland marginalization in surrounding areas and the factors that might play a dominant role in this process remain elusive. Therefore, the present study considered rapidly urbanized regions of 128 county-level units in the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) of China from 2000 to 2020 as the study area. Methods such as spatial autocorrelation analysis, hotspot analysis, and multiple linear regression analysis were used to explore the spatiotemporal evolution characteristics and the driving factors of farmland marginalization. The results showed that: (i) the marginalization ratio of farmland in YRD from 2000 to 2020 was 31.34%, with a distinctly increasing trend, generally high in the central and southern and low in the north areas; (ii) marginalization exhibited different spatial agglomeration under different influencing factors: the economy-induced marginalization ratio was 23.19%, playing a dominant role, in general, distributed as high in the middle and low on the sides, while the nature-induced marginalization ratio was 8.15%, and in general, the spatial pattern shifted from discrete- to a clear- distribution of high in the south and low in the north; and, (iii) farmland area per capita, total power of agricultural machinery, GDP per capita and government farmland subsidies were the main factors driving farmland marginalization. In addition, nature-induced marginalization was primarily driven by economic level and topographical conditions, whereas economy-induced marginalization was primarily driven by production conditions. We suggest that in the future, corresponding policies and measures should be established to reduce farmland marginalization in rapidly urbanized areas and to ensure food security.