From input-driven to efficiency-sustained growth: Four decades of transformation in China's national agricultural programs

Sustainably feeding an increasingly affluent global population remains a major challenge. Since the 1980s, China has implemented national agricultural programs, initially aimed at boosting yields and later expanding to improve resource use efficiency and sustainability. Using an ensemble machine learning framework, we quantified their impacts on crop yield and fertilizer use efficiency (FUE) from 1980 to 2020 while combining anthropogenic and natural factors. This approach explained about 80% of variation in crop yield and FUE. Over four decades, China's average crop yield doubled from 2.9 to 5.7 t ha−1, with 59% of the increase associated with these programs. Yield gains were initially linked to increased fertilizer inputs, which were accompanied by a decline in FUE, and over time, national programs coincided with the stabilization and improvement of FUE in most prefectures. These results highlight four decades of Chinese agricultural policy interventions from input-driven to efficiency-sustained yield growth, offering guidance for sustainable food security.