Transformations  in
Business & Economics

IS MOVEMENT TOWARDS SUSTAINABLE LIVESTOCK FARMING POSSIBLE? ANALYSIS OF THE CHINESE HUSBANDRY SECTOR⁴
Xueli Chen, Shasha Luo, Tomas Balezentis, Biaowen Xu

ABSTRACT. Throughout three decades of intensive economic development, the Chinese agricultural sector made significant progress. Animal husbandry, which accounts for about a quarter of total agricultural output, has also maintained fast growth during this period. China has turned into the biggest carbon emitter in the world since 2006. As an important part of agriculture, husbandry also contributes much to carbon emissions, even though was often ignored in the earlier research. This paper seeks to assess the green productivity growth by taking into account carbon emissions based on the Luenberger-Hicks-Moorsteen productivity indicator and non-parametric estimates for China's animal husbandry over the period of 2002-2017. The green productivity gains at the aggregate level are separated into three components: technological progress, technical efficiency change, and scale efficiency change. Our results indicate that the annual green productivity growth of China's animal husbandry is 3.34% p.a., which is mainly driven by technological progress (3.72% p.a.), but negatively affected by technical efficiency change (-0.19% p.a.) and scale efficiency change (-0.19% p.a.). Furthermore, the disparities in green growths among provinces are observed and the corresponding policy implications are derived.

KEYWORDS:  green total factor productivity, animal husbandry, by-production technology, technological progress, Chinese agriculture.

JEL classification:  Q15, Q56.

⁴Acknowledgement:  Xueli Chen acknowledges financial support from the National Social Science Foundation of China (20CXW011); Biaowen Xu thanks for the Science and Technology Innovation Program of Fujian Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CXTD2021013-3).