Cropping pattern optimization considering water shadow price and virtual water flows: A case study of Yellow River Basin in China

Cropping pattern determines the agricultural water use requirement and efficiency, as well as economic benefits of crop production. Agricultural water resources include blue water (irrigation water) and green water (soil moisture from precipitation), which have different shadow prices. The virtual water (VW) flow embedded in the interregional food trade causes burden shifts of water resources pressures in space. However, these intertwined economic and social effects have been neglected in regional cropping structure management. Using the case of the Yellow River Basin in China, here, we propose a two-stage multi-objective cropping pattern optimization scheme to maximize crop economic output, while minimize blue water scarcities (the first stage), and considered the criteria of maximum economic benefits of the interprovincial crop-related VW flows based on the shadow prices of crop green and blue water use (the second stage). Results show considerable differences in shadow prices of crop water use by colures, crops and location. With the optimized cropping pattern, which appropriately expands the planting scale of vegetables with higher water shadow price and comparative advantage and reduces the crop planting with lower water shadow price and intensive blue water consumption (e.g., soybean and wheat), blue water scarcity can be alleviated by ∼20%, combined with a ∼5% increase in crop economic output and up to ∼3% (800 million USD) higher benefits of VW flows. The premise to achieve above goals is to improve crop water resources utilization efficiency and break down the barriers of dietary preferences and trade policy.