Spatiotemporal characteristics of green development indicators in the whole dairy industry chain in China

Dairy industry is a key agricultural industry related to public health and food safety. According to the agricultural green development index system in China, 28 indicators were selected from five aspects (i.e. social development, economic benefits, agricultural productivity, resource utilization and ecological environment) in this study to establish the green development indicators and benchmarks of the whole dairy industry chain in China. Based on the index system, this study quantitatively analyzed spatiotemporal variations of green development indicators of the whole dairy industry chain in China during 1990-2017 using NUFER-animal model. The results showed that 1) milchigs consumption per capita in China increased from 2.0 to 12.5 kg·cap.^-1·a^-1 during 1990-2017, 2) milk yield per cow increased from 2.4 to 7.0 t·head^-1·a^-1, 3) nitrogen use efficiency of crop-livestock farming system increased from 8.4% to 14.4%, 4) blue water footprint of milk decreased from 0.5 to 0.2 m³·kg^-1, 5) land use per unit milk product decreased from 18.5 to 3.3 m²·kg^-1, and 6) NH₃ volatilization from farming system reduced from 21.9 g(N)·kg^-1 to 7.0 g(N)·kg^-1. Resource utilization and environmental costs per unit of milk showed a downward trend, while they were higher than that of Europe and America. Moreover, production and processing costs of milk increased in China with lower profits than that of developed countries (e.g. Europe and America). The green development level of production, resource utilization and ecological environment were relatively high in the eastern China and the transition zone between cropping area and nomadic area. Production and consumption of milk in the northern China were higher. It is an effective way to promote the revitalization and green development of China's dairy industry by 1) implementing the green technologies and integrating production systems of crop and animal production; 2) building the benefit sharing mechanism of production, processing and marketing industrial chain; and 3) reestablishing the milk quality tracking system of the whole industry chain and the trust mechanism of publics.