Evaluation of the environmental sustainability of farmers' land use decisions in the saline-alkaline areas.

Environmental sustainability has become the focus of agricultural sustainability. This study is aimed at evaluating the environmental sustainability of farmers' land use decisions on saline-alkaline soil in China. Based on empirical and theoretical approaches, the decisions mainly include planting, crop distribution, irrigation, drainage, and fertilization. By surveying 22 administrative villages in typical ecologically fragile saline-alkaline areas of five regions (Shandong, Jiangsu, Jilin, Ningxia, and Xinjiang), the paper builds the evaluation criteria at village level, and obtains a comprehensive index. From the results, irrigation concerns are absent from decision-making. For other decisions, farmers in most villages can appropriately deal with planting, drainage, and fertilization according to the regional natural and social geography conditions. But the comprehensive index of crop distribution in the coastal areas is much stronger than in the northeast and northwest. It is found that the similarities of unsustainability lie in the planting of water-consuming crops, the arbitrary distribution of crops, lack of drainage planning, obsolete water conservancy facilities, excessive use of chemical fertilizers, etc. According to the research, on the one hand, it can guide farmers to rationally make use of saline-alkaline land; on the other hand, it can also provide the basis for government to make differentiated policies in different areas and enhance pertinence in the course of technological extension and application.