Based on interviews with 695 smallholders in Jianghan Plain, this paper introduced the three-stage data envelopment analysis (DEA) model to analyze the agricultural production efficiency of conservation tillage adopters and explored the impact of environmental factors on agricultural production efficiency. The empirical results showed the following (1) Planting area, seed consumption, labor input, pesticide usage, chemical fertilizer usage, agricultural film usage were selected as input indicators, agricultural output was chosen as an output indicator, and the traditional DEA model was used to calculate the production efficiency of smallholders, and the agricultural production efficiency of smallholders was found to be at a low level. In addition, environmental and random factors both have significant impacts on efficiency, so they should be stripped. (2) After excluding environmental factors and random factors, the drop in pure technical efficiency of smallholders in the third stage was higher than the drop in scale efficiency when compared with the first stage. Moreover, the true technical efficiency was the main restricting factor for the agricultural production efficiency. (3) Educational level of smallholders, policy support, and information acquisition were the factors that affect the technical efficiency significantly. Improving the efficiency of agricultural production technology for smallholders requires strengthening rural basic education, improving subsidy policies for conservation agricultural technology, and establishing and improving rural information technology services.

The research question for this study is estimating the public’s willingness to pay for the public goods generated by farmland, and exploring respondents’ heterogeneity in their preferences for these goods. The approach used is a choice experiment, using respondents from the city of Wuhan, China. Six attributes representing public good values (farmland area, farmland fertility, water quality, air quality, species richness, and recreational value) and the level of private cost are selected in this study. A heteroscedastic conditional logit model is used to analyze the respondents’ willingness to pay for improvements in these public goods, accounting for systematic heterogeneity in public preferences. The results show the public are willing to pay to preserve the non-market values generated by farmland, with air quality valued most and followed by farmland fertility, farmland area, water quality, species richness and recreational value. In addition, respondents with higher income, and who are aware of the non-market values of farmland and have a willingness to pay for it have a smaller error variance, i.e., these respondents are more consistent in their choices. This study may help decision makers improving more differentiated farmland protection policies.

Part-time farming has been suggested by scholars to play an important part in farmers’ decision making, but seldom empirical evidence has been done on the field of conservation agriculture (CA) technology adoption worldwide. Based on the field survey data of 433 farmers in Jianghan Plain, China, this paper estimate the impact of part-time farming on farmers’ adoption of CA technology by applying the multivariate logistic model. The results show that 91.92% of the farmers adopted CA technology. Part-time farming had a highly significant positive influence on the likelihood of adoption. Moreover, the impact degree increased along with the deepening of part-time farming. In addition, farmers’ adoption behaviors were affected by gender, contracted land area, economic welfare cognition and social welfare cognition. Our results help to understand farmers’ complex decision-making on farmland and to promote the sustainable development of agriculture in Jianghan Plain. A somewhat targeted approach to design policies to support technological, policy and institutional interventions to encourage farmers to engage in part-time farming are recommended, especially in areas that share similar edaphic and climatic characteristics with Jianghan Plain.

This study proposes a farmland ecological compensation zoning index (FECZI) and a horizontal farmland ecological fiscal payment model to assess the amount of horizontal fiscal payment in the 48 districts of the Wuhan Agglomeration of China. The results indicate that: 14 districts of Wuhan Agglomeration are classified into farmland ecological payment areas and the remaining 34 districts are compensation ones. Moreover, the largest ecological payment area is Hongshan (109,901.05 × 10⁴ Yuan), while the lowest is Tieshan (83.69 × 10⁴ Yuan). The largest ecological compensation area is Tianmen (–84,076.11 × 10⁴ Yuan), while the least is Hannan (−1340.58 × 10⁴ Yuan). The findings can be used in the reform of farmland ecological compensation as well as innovation of fiscal payment mechanism in Wuhan Agglomeration, China.

The exploration of different stakeholders’ heterogeneous willingness to pay for farmland ecological value is a fundamental part of understanding the total value of farmland protection and designing a scientific farmland protection policy. Unlike the homogenous assumption used in the previous studies, the mixed logit model of choice experiment method was applied to estimate respondents’ heterogeneous willingness to pay for farmland non-market value (represented by farmland area, farmland fertility, water quality, air quality, species richness, and recreational value) in this study. Data came from a sample of 289 farmers in Wuhan, China who were face-to-face interviewed. Results showed that: (1) Farmers were unsatisfied with the status quo of the present farmland ecological environment and were willing to pay to preserve all the attributes of farmland non-market value. (2) Farmers had a heterogeneous preference for the status quo and recreational value—the error variances of these two attributes were both significant at the 1% level, and their willingness to pay for the farmland non-market value in Wuhan was 1141.88 Yuan/hm². (3) Farmers’ cognition degree of farmland importance and whether respondents bought medical insurance or not had significant impacts on their willingness to pay. The results can provide the basic foundation for accurate valuation of farmland non-market services, help farmland regulators make the right farmland conversion decisions, and improve the resource allocation efficiency of local financial expenditure during farmland protection in Wuhan.