How Does Agricultural Mechanization Service Affect Agricultural Green Transformation in China?

Agricultural mechanization service (AMS) is a critical path to achieving agricultural green transformation with smallholders as the mainstay of agricultural production. Based on the panel data of 30 Chinese provinces from 2011 to 2020, this paper measures the AGTFP using the Super-SBM model and examines the effects of different AMS supply agents on AGTFP and spatial spillover effects through the spatial Durbin model. The main conclusions are as follows: First, China's AGTFP showed a stable growth trend, with the mean value increasing from 0.1990 in 2011 to 0.5590 in 2020. Second, the specialization (SPO) and large-scale (LSO) of AMS supply organizations have significantly positive effect on the AGTFP of the local province. However, SPO has a significantly positive effect on the AGTFP of the neighboring provinces, while LSO has the opposite effect. Third, the specialization of AMS supply individuals (SPI) has significantly negative effect on the AGTFP of the local province. In contrast, the large-scale AMS supply individuals (LSI) has the opposite effect. Furthermore, the spatial spillover effects of both are insignificant. Fourth, the spatial spillover effect of AGTFP shows asymmetry among different regions and indicates that AMS resources flow from non-main grain production and economically developed regions to main grain production and less developed regions. These findings provide helpful policy references for constructing and improving the agricultural mechanization service system and realizing the agricultural green transformation in economies as the mainstay of agricultural production.

Automated summary

Based on panel data from 2011 to 2020 in 30 Chinese provinces, this paper measures AGTFP using the Super-SBM model and examines the impact of different AMS supply agents on AGTFP and spatial spillover effects. The findings suggest that specialization and large-scale operations of AMS supply organizations have positive effects on local AGTFP, while specialization has positive effects on neighboring provinces' AGTFP. On the other hand, specialization of AMS supply individuals has a negative effect on local AGTFP, while large-scale AMS supply individuals have a positive effect. The spatial spillover effects are insignificant. The asymmetry of AGTFP spatial spillover indicates the flow of AMS resources from non-main grain production and developed regions to main grain production and less developed regions. These findings provide policy references for agricultural mechanization service system construction and realizing agricultural green transformation.