Food-Energy-Water Crises in the United States and China: Commonalities and Asynchronous Experiences Support Integration of Global Efforts

Research on the effect of environmental regulation to the green water resource efficiency in China-based on the perspectives of high pressure and low suction

Environmental regulation with spatial spillover effect is an important way to accelerate the transformation and upgrading of modern water resources structure, and then achieve sustainable development of China's water resources. How does environmental regulation affect the GWRE to alleviate or solve China's water shortage? In this paper, the GWRE is measured based on panel data from 31 provinces in China from 2000-2020, and the impact of high pressure (low suction) and heterogeneity on GWRE by environmental regulations is explored. The results revealed that the high pressure of environmental regulation significantly promoted the improvement of GWRE, but the improvement effect of low suction power was not significant. Similar conclusions are drawn under the tests of population size-economic distance and population size-technology distance. The high pressure of market-type and autonomous-type environmental regulation has a significant effect on GWRE, while the improvement effect of command-type environmental regulation is weak. The high pressure of environmental regulation in the eastern, central, western, and northeastern regions has a decreasing effect on GWRE. It is recommended to break the principle of GDP performance appraisal, establish and improve the "green performance" evaluation system, adopt regional differentiated environmental regulation policies, and establish a modern green water resources industrial structure system.

GF14f gene is negatively associated with yield and grain chalkiness under rice ratooning

BACKGROUND

Ratoon rice cropping has been shown to provide new insights into overcoming the current challenges of rice production in southern China. However, the potential mechanisms impacting yield and grain quality under rice ratooning remain unclear.

METHODS

In this study, changes in yield performance and distinct improvements in grain chalkiness in ratoon rice were thoroughly investigated, using physiological, molecular and transcriptomic analysis.

RESULTS

Rice ratooning induced an extensive carbon reserve remobilization in combination with an impact on grain filling, starch biosynthesis, and ultimately, an optimization in starch composition and structure in the endosperm. Furthermore, these variations were shown to be associated with a protein-coding gene: GF14f (encoding GF14f isoform of 14-3-3 proteins) and such gene negatively impacts oxidative and environmental resistance in ratoon rice.

CONCLUSION

Our findings suggested that this genetic regulation by GF14f gene was the main cause leading to changes in rice yield and grain chalkiness improvement of ratoon rice, irrespective of seasonal or environmental effects. A further significance was to see how yield performance and grain quality of ratoon rice were able to be achieved at higher levels via suppression of GF14f.

Domestic plant food loss and waste in the United States: Environmental footprints and mitigation strategies

The United States (U.S.) aims to reduce half of food loss and waste (FLW) by 2030. To achieve this goal, the public, academic, and political attentions on FLW have been increasing, and a series of actions have been implemented. However, the actions lack consideration on the categorical priority of FLW mitigation in relation to environmental footprints. In this article, we compare the FLW of three main plant food categories (i.e., grains, vegetables, and fruits) and their water and carbon footprints during 1970-2017. The vegetable FLW doubled during the period, reaching 3.39 × 10¹⁰ kg in 2017, which was 5- and 2-fold higher than the FLW of grains and fruits, respectively. The FLW of vegetables, grains, and fruits contributed 29%, 47%, and 24% to the total blue water wasted through FLW. The total carbon dioxide emissions generated by plant FLW were contributed by vegetables with 50%, grains with 31%, and fruits with 19%. Canonical correspondence analysis indicates that vegetable FLW had a higher positive correlation with urbanization, household incomes, gross domestic product, and high-income population than grain FLW, whereas fruit FLW was not influenced by these socioeconomic factors. Therefore, we suggest that the FLW mitigation should be prioritized on vegetables. Specific strategies include local food sourcing, shortening food miles, building food belts, and developing controlled-environment agriculture. Our data-based comparisons provide valuable insights into food policy improvement for achieving the 2030 reduction goal of the U.S., but the insights could be improved by considering the influences of foods imported from other nations.

Comparisons between main and ratoon crops in resource use efficiencies, environmental impacts, and economic profits of rice ratooning system in central China

Rice production in China is constrained by excessive water consumption, labor shortage, large environmental footprint, and low economic profit. Rice ratooning is a promising practice to increase famers' profit with higher resource use efficiency and less environmental impact compared with other rice cropping systems. However, there is limited information on the differences in energy use efficiency, water and labor productivity, environmental footprint, and economic return between main crop (MC) and ratoon crop (RC) in this cropping system. This study was conducted to compare the system performance between the two crops of ratoon rice using on-farm survey data. Average grain yield was 8.40 and 4.55 t ha^-1 for MC and RC, respectively. Although RC produced 45.9% lower grain yield, it had 57.3% less total energy input and 71.0% lower total production cost than MC, which resulted in a significantly higher energy use efficiency, net energy ratio, net economic return and benefit-to-cost ratio. Lower total energy input and production cost of RC was mainly attributed to the reduction in fertilizer application and labor input, respectively compared with MC. In addition, both labor and water productivity of RC was significantly higher than those of MC. Furthermore, the global warming potential (GWP) and yield-scaled GWP of RC was 59.3% and 23.4% lower than those of MC, respectively, due to lower agronomic inputs and GHGs emissions. Overall, our results suggested that RC had higher resource use efficiency, better economic performance, and less environment impact compared with MC.