Can Agricultural Production Services Influence Smallholders’ Willingness to Adjust Their Agriculture Production Modes? Evidence from Rural China

The transformation of agricultural production modes is an inevitable trend in China’s agricultural development. It is important to study the willingness of smallholder farmers to adjust their agricultural production modes to promote the transformation of China’s agricultural production modes. Agricultural production services are an effective way to realize the organic linkage between smallholder farmers and modern agriculture. To analyze the impact of agricultural production services on smallholder farmers’ willingness to adjust their agricultural production modes, this study uses data from a thematic study of 590 smallholder farmers in the Huang–Huai–Hai regions in 2022 to measure the extent of smallholder farmers’ full-cycle adoption of agricultural production services from the perspective of regional cropping systems for the first time and analyzes the impact of agricultural production services on farmers’ willingness to adjust their agricultural production modes. The study results show that the extent of full-cycle adoption of agricultural production services significantly affects farmers’ willingness to adjust their agricultural production modes. For each unit increase in the extent of full-cycle adoption of agricultural production services in line with the regional cropping system, the probability of farmers choosing “farmland transfer” and “agricultural production trusteeship” becomes 11.31 and 7.24 times higher than that of choosing “self-growing”, respectively. Based on the research results, this paper proposes the following countermeasures: first, we should pay more attention to the supply and demand of agricultural production services, especially to support the key weak links in developing agricultural production services for the process of grain production. Second, we should undertake more active and effective publicity measures to make full use of expressions that are acceptable to farmers to improve their understanding of productive agricultural services further and enhance their willingness to adopt productive agricultural services.