Recessive transition of farmland use and food security: Evidence from China

Recessive transition of farmland use plays a critical role in achieving food security, yet it remains insufficiently explored, particularly under the background of dietary changes. Moreover, most studies measuring food security focused on food production capacity while neglecting variations in food consumption. This study assesses food security by calculating the gap between food production and consumption, then measures the recessive transition of farmland use from three-dimensional morphologies: input, scale, and output, and quantitatively examines its impacts on food security. Using China's provincial dataset from 2000 to 2022, econometric model estimates showed that the input, scale, and output morphology of recessive farmland transition significantly influence food security. The boosting effect of the output morphology on food security is stronger, while the scale morphology requires more improvement. Additionally, the impacts of recessive transition of farmland use on food security vary across different areas, with more pronounced effects observed in the major grain-producing areas and the single-ripping areas. These findings reveal asynchrony in recessive farmland use transition among different morphologies and regions. To achieve stable food security, policies should be committed to coordinating multidimensional farmland use transitions by guiding moderate-scale operations, with the major grain-producing areas serving as pilot zones. •The assessment of food security is conducted amidst shifts in dietary structure.•Impacts of recessive transition of farmland use on food security are examined.•An urgent need to improve the input morphology of farmland use transition.•Optimize the multifaceted morphologies of farmland transition in major grain-producing areas.