“A timely assistance” or “An additional burden”? Study on the impact of digital technology on grain production resilience

Grain security is cornerstone of national stability. In light of increasingly severe challenges in grain supply, digital technology, a new driving force for reshaping the agricultural production paradigm, is becoming a critical path to strengthening grain production resilience and ensuring stable supply. This paper, takes 30 provinces in China spanning from 2011 to 2023 as research samples. And adopting the two-way fixed effects model, it constructs a theoretical framework—“Digital Technology-Three Factors of Productivity-Grain Production Resilience”. to empirically analyze the direct impact and mediating mechanism of digital technology on grain production resilience. Research results show that digital technology exerts a significant promotional impact on grain production resilience—a conclusion that remains robust after a series of reliability tests, including replacing explanatory variables, excluding specific year samples, winsorization, changing to the Tobit model, and excluding regional samples. Meanwhile, this impact shows significant regional heterogeneity. Specifically, the promotional effect of digital technology is most prominent in major grain-producing areas, economically underdeveloped regions, and non-humid areas. Mechanism analysis reveals that this impact is primarily achieved through three transmission pathways: enhancing farmers’ digital application capabilities, improving the level of agricultural socialization services, and promoting land scale management. Finally, this impact presents a significant single threshold effect regarding the level of fiscal support for agriculture: once this level exceeds the threshold value of 0.0759, the positive nonlinear empowering effect of digital technology becomes more significant. The research conclusions contribute to a deeper understanding of the driving effect of digital technology and provide theoretical support and policy recommendations for increasing investment in agricultural digitalization, stimulating the potential of productivity factors, addressing regional differences, and strengthening fiscal support for agriculture.