State Key Joint Laboratory of Environment Simulation and Pollution Control (SKLESPC), School of Environment, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.
Faculty of Architecture, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China.
Nat Food. 2024 May;5(5):390-401. doi: 10.1038/s43016-024-00980-5. Epub 2024 May 14.
Diverse development paths among cities within an urban agglomeration can lead to uneven changes in their agricultural production scale, which reshape the inter-city food supply patterns and the spatiotemporal characteristics of nitrogen (N) pollution from the food system. Here, using Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area of China as a case, we found a substantial decrease in N use efficiency of crop production from 45.2% to 29.3% during 1989-2007, along with a growing level of concentration of food N production in less-urbanized cities. From 1989 to 2018, 12.3% to 42.2% of total N pollution in food production became embedded in inter-city trade, leading to aggregation of N pollution in peripheral cities with relatively low levels of economic development. We suggest that protection and intensification of cropland from urban encroachment, as well as enhancing the economic and technical synergies among cities, can serve the sustainable transition of the food system with coordinated N pollution mitigation.
城市群内城市的多样化发展路径可能导致农业生产规模的不均衡变化，从而重塑城市间的食品供应格局和食品系统中氮（N）污染的时空特征。在这里，我们以中国粤港澳大湾区为例，发现 1989 年至 2007 年间，作物生产的 N 使用效率从 45.2%大幅下降至 29.3%，同时，食品 N 生产的集中程度在欠城市化城市中不断提高。1989 年至 2018 年，食品生产中总 N 污染的 12.3%至 42.2%嵌入到了城市间贸易中，导致经济发展水平相对较低的周边城市 N 污染聚集。我们建议，保护和加强农田免受城市侵占，并加强城市间的经济和技术协同作用，能够实现具有协调 N 污染缓解的食品系统的可持续转型。
