New spatial pattern of food production and its climatic disaster risk in China

Climate change, manifested through increasingly frequent, intense, and spatially clustered extreme weather events, is profoundly reshaping regional and global food-production systems and introducing unprecedented uncertainties into agricultural stability. Using county-level administrative units as the fundamental analytical scale, this study employs spatial-overlay analysis to characterize the evolution of China’s grain-production pattern between 2010 and 2020, with focused examination of major grain-producing regions, including the 800 key grain-producing counties and the nine traditional commodity-grain bases. Building on these spatial diagnostics, we further investigate the impacts of major climate-induced disasters, selecting the three northeastern provinces—an area that plays a pivotal role in safeguarding national food security—as a representative region for analyzing long-term agricultural disaster trends. Subsequently, we assess the county-level risks of floods, droughts, and heatwaves based on the IPCC risk framework (Risk = Hazard × Exposure × Vulnerability). Hazard data for three extreme events under current, 1.5℃, and 2.0℃ warming scenarios were derived from high-resolution gridded datasets. To enhance accuracy, we employed a raster-based statistical method that integrates a spatial mask of cropland distribution, ensuring that hazard assessments were precisely aligned with agricultural production spaces. Exposure was quantified as the sown area of major grain crops, calculated from the 30m-resolution MGL dataset by applying a weighting rule (2.0 for double-cropping systems, 1.0 for single-cropping) to account for cropping intensity. Vulnerability was constructed using nighttime light intensity and irrigation coverage as proxies for socioeconomic resilience and adaptive capacity. The results indicate that: (1) Between 2010 and 2020, China’s grain production continued its pronounced “northward shift,” accompanied by a marked spatial polarization, as evidenced by simultaneous increases in the numbers of both high-output (>1 million tons) and low-output (<0.1 million tons) counties. (2) Significant internal differentiation is also observed within core production areas. Although the collective contribution of key grain-producing counties has risen, 42.24% of them still experienced output declines. Furthermore, several traditional commodity-grain bases, including the Taihu Plain and Pearl River Delta, exhibited diminishing production capacity. (3) Disaster records from the three northeastern provinces demonstrate that, despite a reduction in the overall affected-area ratio due to technological advancements, the rates of severe crop damage and total crop failure have shown an upward trend, indicating persistent vulnerability to high-intensity extreme events. (4) Future warming is projected to substantially amplify climate-related risks, with impacts disproportionately concentrated in major grain-producing regions. Flood risk exhibits a clear "northward expansion" trend, with high-risk zones (risk index > 500) expanding from southern basins to the Yangtze River Delta and eventually reaching the Northeast China Plain under a 2.0℃ scenario. Drought risk is a foundational constraint, with nearly 20% of China's total grain production already exposed to high-risk conditions (risk index > 4,000) under the current climate. The threat from heatwaves demonstrates the most alarming trend, exhibiting explosive growth. Under a 2.0℃ warming scenario, the share of counties facing high heatwave risk (risk index > 20,000) is projected to increase more than fourfold from the current level (from 2.12% to 8.74%), exposing over one-fifth (21.18%) of the national grain production to severe heat stress. Crucially, both current risk levels and future risk escalations are significantly higher in major grain-producing counties than the national average. Furthermore, the additional 0.5℃ of warming from 1.5℃ to 2.0℃ triggers a non-linear surge in risk, highlighting the critical importance of achieving the 1.5℃ climate target. These findings underscore the urgent need to integrate future climate risk projections into national food-security planning to enhance the resilience of China’s food system.