Integrating Carbon‐Efficiency Gains Into Agricultural Land‐Use Restructuring: Scenario‐Based Simulation for Sustainable Development

ABSTRACT Despite increasing attention to low‐carbon agriculture, a critical knowledge gap persists in integrating carbon efficiency into spatial land‐use restructuring. Most existing approaches prioritize either grain output or economic return, neglecting the synergistic optimization of productivity and emission reduction. This single‐dimensional focus impedes the alignment of agricultural production with climate targets and constrains the sector's green transition. Therefore, this study develops a hybrid framework that couples a slacks‐based measure (SBM) model with the GeoSOS‐FLUS land‐use simulator based on county‐level agricultural land carbon emission quantitative accounts and thereby generates spatial reconfiguration pathways under alternative scenarios. The findings indicate that: (1) 66.67% of townships operate at low agricultural carbon‐utilization efficiency, underscoring the urgent need for land‐use restructuring; (2) the food security priority scenario, relying on rural settlement consolidation and optimized garden land allocation, adds 4515 ha of arable land (+14.46%) and delivers a simultaneous reduction in carbon intensity, whereas the intensive development priority scenario—characterized by peri‐urban agricultural land contraction, scattered rural growth and northward clustering of protected horticulture—curtails agricultural land by 3558 ha (−11.40%); and (3) four low‐carbon optimization strategies—improving agricultural land efficiency, strengthening ecological protection, optimizing green transition models, and promoting sustainable development—are urgently needed to underwrite the green transition of agricultural land and to deliver a theoretical scaffold that secures regional grain security alongside green and sustainable development.