Integrated crop–livestock system and farm resilience enhancement: evidence from ecological rice–duck farming system in China

Abstract Farm resilience is of great significance for agricultural system to keep robust in the increasingly volatile climatic, economic and social environment. Ecological rice–duck integration farming is a typical integrated crop–livestock farming system in Asian countries. Our study adopts longitudinal data from 2018 to 2022 of a rice–duck integration farming system and a specialized rice monoculture farming system in China to analyze the resilience effects of integrated crop–livestock farming systems. Based on the in-depth comparison between the two systems, we find that: (1) rice–duck integration system outperforms the conventional rice monoculture system in terms of cost reduction, profit increase, volatility stabilizing and product quality enhancing; (2) rice–duck integration system has evident advantages in mitigating the negative consequences brought by climatic changes and increasingly serious pests’ attacks, featuring that there are fewer percentage of crops flatten during typhoon season and fewer rice leaf roller attacks; (3) rice–duck integration system is effective in opposing to the results of long-term overuse of fertilizer and pesticide in agricultural production in China, and it improves the soil quality. Our findings contribute to the understanding of the important roles rice–duck integration farming system may play in improving economic and environmental resilience. It worth promoting this with governments in Asian countries for larger application in the agricultural sector.