Can farmers’ adoption of conservation tillage achieve sustainable agricultural production targets? Evidence from the Jianghan Plain, Hubei, China

As a major agricultural country, China is under threat from land degradation because of long-term high-carbon-emission land use patterns. Conservation tillage (CT) technologies are expected to restore soil fertility, transform agricultural production models, and improve sustainability. However, the impacts of farmers’ CT adoption on achieving sustainable agricultural development remain unclear. To investigate the heterogeneous ecological effects resulting from farmers’ adoption of CT technologies, this study estimates the ecological effects of CT and examines the differences in these effects across different technologies, utilizing survey data from 1,449 farmers in the rural Jianghan Plain of China. The results show that farmers’ technology perceptions, previous adoption behaviour, and collective economic conditions significantly affect their CT adoption behaviour. The agricultural eco-efficiency in the Jianghan Plain is only 0.65. After removing bias from self-selection and unobservable factors, the ecological effect of CT adoption was 8.43%. The four different CT technologies evaluated in this study were found to increase agricultural eco-effects and achieve sustainable agriculture. However, the agricultural eco-effects of different CT technologies vary, indicating heterogeneity. Finally, policies that include implementing different combinations of CT models according to local conditions, technical training, and establishing subsidies for CT adoption are highly recommended.