Li Kele, Liu Yongqing, Yang Hongli
As the primary industry, agriculture bears essential responsibilities such as ensuring food security, maintaining social stability, and protecting the environment. High-quality agricultural development is the cornerstone of high-quality economic development in China, and it is also necessary to accelerate the construction of agricultural power. Comprehensively measuring the high-quality development level of agriculture in the Yellow River Basin will help to exert the ecological protection barrier of the Yellow River Basin, ensure national food security, promote agricultural modernization, and accelerate the construction of agricultural power. An evaluation index system for high-quality agricultural development was constructed based on the new development concept. Taking 76 prefecture-level cities in 8 provinces (regions) in the Yellow River Basin as research objects, the AHP-entropy method was used to measure the high-quality agricultural development level in the Yellow River Basin from 2016 to 2020. Dagum Gini coefficient and Kernel density estimation describe its spatiotemporal evolution law. The results shows that: 1) The overall high-quality agricultural development in the Yellow River Basin shows an upward trend but is still at a low level between 0.25 and 0.35. The high-quality agricultural development in the upper, middle, and lower reaches shows a spatial distribution pattern of “high on both sides and low in the middle”. The development level of each dimension is generally low, especially the innovation dimension, which has the lowest development level, indicating that agricultural development in the Yellow River Basin lacks endogenous growth momentum. 2) The Dagum Gini coefficient shows that the intra-regional differences in the upper, middle, and lower reaches of the Yellow River Basin are constantly shrinking, showing an overall downward trend, and the inter-regional differences generally appear as upstream-downstream>upstream-middle reaches>midstream-downstream. Inter-regional differences are the primary source of differences in high-quality agricultural development levels in the Yellow River Basin, followed by intra-regional differences, with hypervariable density differences making the most negligible contribution. 3) Kernel density estimation shows that the center of the distribution curve of the entire basin moves to the right, indicating that the level of high-quality agricultural development in the Yellow River Basin is gradually improving. The distribution curves in the upper, middle, and lower reaches all have a right tail, indicating that the level of high-quality agricultural development in some regions is significantly higher than that in other cities in the same area. The distribution curves changed from single peak to bimodal or multi-peak after 2018, indicating that the high-quality agricultural development in the Yellow River Basin has polarized and stratified characteristics after 2018, showing a pronounced gradient effect. Accordingly, it is necessary to adhere to the development strategy of promoting agriculture through science and technology, assisting agriculture through science and technology, and empowering agriculture through science and technology. Downstream regions must fully play their role as “leaders” and promote the construction of systematic projects for agricultural innovation-driven development and high-quality development. Taking the coordinated development of agriculture in the upper, middle, and lower reaches as an essential focus to promote the high-quality development of agriculture in the Yellow River Basin, each region must capitalize on its unique advantages, adapt to local conditions, and coordinate as a whole to promote the overall high-quality development of agriculture in the Yellow River Basin. Central regions should leverage the spillover effect and radiation driving role on the surrounding areas, smooth the channels and mechanisms for cooperation and exchanges between regions, and truly achieve “point-to-area” assistance.