SOAS Research Online

Abstract

To solve the energy crisis and protect the ecological environment has been the central concern of the sustainable development debate. The reproducibility and lower environmental impacts of bioenergy have attracted increasing attention in the debate. This research investigates the potentials of growing rapeseed in winter fallow fields across the Yangtze River Basin (YRB) to serve the goal of boosting bioenergy production and improving edible oil security in China. It first quantifies the extent of winter fallow fields in the Basin and identifies the accurate starting and ending dates of the fallowing at the grid-cell level. It then matches the fallowing periods with the growing period grid-by-grid and assesses the current and future potentials of rapeseed production across the matched grid-cells in the region. The assessments take into consideration of climate change adaptations on sowing dates and on the choice of varieties with suitable growth cycle length. Finally, by coupling the Agro-Ecological Zones (AEZ) model and CHINAGRO-II economic model, this research simulates economically meaningful levels of rapeseeds production and trade for 2020 and 2030. A 60% realization of the production potential would increase total rapeseed supply by 9.1 million tons, reduce China's rapeseed import to zero and further reduce soybean import by 8.1 million tons in 2020. In 2030, the import of rapeseed would be reduced from 15 million tons under baseline to 7.3 million tons.