Assessing Agricultural Production Greening Transformation and Exploring Sustainable Development Paths of China’s Loess Plateau

The core of the dual circulation mutual promotion strategy of the Loess Plateau and the greening Yellow River Basin (YRB) is sustainable green and high-quality development. Gully agricultural production greening transformation (GAGP) is vital to this, and can be achieved by escaping gully-related social-ecological traps and moving towards a more sustainable Loess Plateau. This study investigated the spatiotemporal pattern of GAGP in the Loess Plateau, and analyzed its transformation stage, process characteristics, and greening trend by using emergy analysis and improved human impact population affluence technology model (IPATM). The results show the following. 1) From 2000 to 2020, the structure of GAGP in the Loess Plateau experienced cascading transitions. The main results show that total output emergy (amount of energy consumed in direct and indirect transformations to make a product or service) of GAGP in the Loess Plateau increased from 2.76 E + 22 sej in 2000 to 1.38 E + 23 sej in 2020, with 42.79% growth in input emergy and 71.33% growth in non-renewable emergy. In general, gully agricultural production in the Loess Plateau has entered a new development stage of balanced structural adaptation adjustments. 2) Over 20 years of monitoring, the degree of GAGP development in the Loess Plateau gradually increased. The lower emergy sustainability index (ESI) indicates that GAGP sustainability is not yet close to sustainable development. 3) IPATM analysis indicates that rapid urbanization and technological innovation have led to an increase in the total amount of energy utilization. The study highlights the policy insight that implementing GAGP could improve the efficiency and optimize the structure of the gully agricultural regional function by applying geographic engineering practices. The research results provide insights about gully-focused rural transformation, crop planting adjustments, improvements in gully living environments, and ways to move to sustainable development of China’s Loess Plateau.