Spatio-temporal distribution pattern and influencing mechanism of national ecological farms in the central and eastern regions of China

As the primary mode of implementing ecological agriculture in China, the development of ecological farms has grown rapidly in recent years, playing a vital role in reducing agricultural consumption, alleviating environmental pollution, and improving food safety. In this study, the national ecological farms announced by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs from 2021 to 2023 were selected from the central and eastern regions of China. Data on agricultural resource endowment, socioeconomic conditions, scientific research policy support, and natural environmental conditions were collected as the influencing factors to explore the spatial and temporal distribution characteristics. The influencing factors of ecological farms in the study area were discussed at the regional and provincial scales. The results showed the following: 1) On a regional scale, the ecological farms in Central and Eastern China, especially the planting ecological farms, were generally distributed aggregately. The degree of balanced distribution of ecological farms, mainly planting ecological farms, in the provinces of the central and eastern regions showed an increasing trend annually. 2) At the provincial scale, there were seven provinces in the study area where ecological farms were clustered, and the remaining nine provinces were randomly distributed. Among them, the fewer the national ecological farms, the more uneven the spatial distribution. 3) The agricultural resource endowment, socioeconomic conditions, scientific research policy support (on the provincial scale), and natural environmental conditions (on the regional scale) all have a significant impact on the distribution of ecological farms in the study area, among which per capita GDP and scientific research innovation have relatively high explanatory power, which interacts with industrial foundation, cultivated land density, average annual precipitation, and average annual temperature to affect the spatial distribution of ecological farms. The results of this study confirm that the optimization of the spatial distribution of ecological farms in China requires a comprehensive consideration of local economic development and its relationship with agricultural resources, promotion of technology-driven eco-friendly farm construction, and a focus on the interaction between climate and precipitation at a regional scale.