2026/01/28 by Xue Shen, Zhihui Liang, Abdelrahman Ali +1 · 1 voice
Agricultural and Biological Sciences · #Agricultural Innovations and Practices #Agricultural Systems and Practices #Rice Cultivation and Yield Improvement
paper · doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2026.147593
openalex publication_date 2026/01/28 · openalex created_date 2026/01/29 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/23
Sustainable rice production is crucial for ensuring food security and mitigating climate change. Although recent research has advanced understanding the biophysical differences among rice systems, most existing studies relied on field experiments and provided limited evidence on how farmers’ adoption of different rice systems affects economic and environmental outcomes. Using representative data from a household survey of 1752 rice farmers in Hubei Province, Central China, this study evaluates the impacts of adopting different rice systems from a farmer-behavioral perspective. Farmers are classified into three groups based on the harvest index values of the rice they adopt: the “single rice (SR) group,” “ratoon rice (RR) group,” and “double rice (DR) group.” A multinomial endogenous treatment effect model (METE) is employed to correct for selection bias in adoption decisions and estimate the economic and environmental impacts of transitioning across systems. Results show that RR-adopted and DR-adopted farmers significantly increase yields relative to SR-adopted farmers, by 47.7 % and 52.5 %, respectively. RR-adopted farmers raises net revenue by 112.3 %, whereas DR-adopted farmers reduces revenue by 69.3 %. Environmentally, RR-adopted and DR-adopted farmers elevate global warming potential (GWP) per hectare—by 35.2 % and 71.8 %, respectively—but RR-adopted farmers achieve a 10.1 % reduction in greenhouse gas emission intensity (GHGI) per unit output due to enhanced yield efficiency. Quantile regressions further reveals distributional heterogeneous effects across all rice yield, net revenue and emission distributions. RR adoption exerts positive effects across the entire yield, revenue, and GWP quantiles, and negative effect on GHGI distribution. RR benefit farmers broadly across all yield, income, and GWP quantiles, alongside uniformly negative effects on GHGI. Conversely, except for net revenue, DR adoption shows uniformly positive effects on rice yields, GWP, and GHGI across all quantiles. These findings provide robust empirical evidence on the trade-offs between productivity, profitability, and environmental sustainability across rice systems under farmer-managed conditions. The results underscore the importance of farmer-centered system adjustments and offer policy-relevant insights for designing more effective and incentive-compatible strategies to promote sustainable and economically viable rice production.