An analysis of the impact of digital technology adoption on the income of high quality farmers in production and operating

by Xiankai Lei, Dongmei Yang

Digital technology is shaping our traditional agriculture in unprecedented ways. As a new engine to empower farmers and promote common prosperity in rural areas, the development of the digital economy can help revitalize rural industries, providing strong support for increasing industrial value-added income and farmers’ income levels. Based on 676 pooled cross-section data of high-quality farmers in China Guangdong Province from 2020–2021, the article empirically examines the impact of digital technology adoption on the production and business income of high-quality farmers and explores its mechanism of action, based on theoretical analysis and using the ERM model. It is found that the use of digital technology helps to increase the income of high quality farmers in production and business, but effects vary for different income levels and different types of high quality farmers. In addition, tests of the mechanism of action suggest that the introduction of digital technologies can mitigate the negative impact of market distance on the income of high quality farmers in production and business. After applying variable substitution, model replacement, and propensity score matching (PSM) for robustness checks, the research findings still hold true. Therefore, efforts should be made to speed up the upgrading of rural digital technology and other infrastructure, increase training for high quality farmers to improve their digital literacy through multiple channels, for the better marketing of agricultural products.