How Trade Competitiveness Drives High-Quality Agricultural Development: The Roles of Agricultural Structural Transformation and Regional Innovation

Global agriculture faces the dual challenges of resource constraints and international competition, making the transition from quantitative expansion to quality upgrading a central imperative. While trade competitiveness is widely considered a key driver of agricultural transformation, the pathways and mechanisms through which it influences agricultural quality upgrading are far more complex than conventionally understood. Against this backdrop, this study constructs a moderated nonlinear mediation theoretical framework. Empirical analysis based on China’s provincial panel data (2014–2023) yields three key findings: (1) Trade competitiveness exerts a significant inverted U-shaped effect on high-quality agricultural development, revealing a dynamic trade-off between “competitive escape” and “competitive suppression.” (2) Optimization of the Agricultural Sectoral Structure serves as a mediating pathway, and this mediation itself exhibits nonlinear characteristics, further underscoring the nuanced nature of “structural dividends.” (3) Regional innovation capacity significantly moderates the latter stage of this pathway (from Optimization of the Agricultural Sectoral Structure to quality development). Viewed through the lens of appropriate technology theory, a robust regional innovation system can deploy context-appropriate technologies and knowledge, thereby mitigating the potential adverse impacts of agricultural structural transformation on quality-related outcomes. This research thus provides a new strategic framework for achieving sustainable, high-quality agricultural growth.