Ever-increasing global environmental issues, land degradation, and groundwater contamination may significantly impact the agricultural sector of any country. The situation worsens while the global agricultural sectors are going through the unsustainable intensification of agricultural production powered by chemical fertilizers and pesticides. This trend leads the sector to exercise environmentally friendly technology (EFT). Capital endowment and ecological cognition may significantly impact fostering farmers’ adoption of environmentally friendly technology. The government also tends to change the existing policies to cope with ever-increasing challenges like pollution control, maintaining ecological balance, and supporting agricultural sectors substantially by employing ecological compensation policy. The study’s main objective is to explore the impacts of farmer’s ecological compensation, capital endowment, and ecological cognition for the adoption of EFT. The empirical setup of the study quantifies with survey data of 471 apple farmers from nine counties of Shandong province. The study used Heckman’s two-stage model to craft the findings. The results showed that 52.02% of fruit farmers adopted two environmentally friendly technologies, and 23.99% of fruit farmers adopted three forms of environmentally friendly technologies. At the same time, we have traced that the capital endowment, planting scale, family income, and technical specialization of fruit farmers significantly impact adopting EFT. The study also revealed that understanding ecological compensation policy has a significant positive effect on adopting environmentally friendly technology. Seemingly, ecological compensation policy has a specific regulatory effect on fruit farmers’ capital endowment and ecological cognition. Therefore, it is necessary to extend the demonstration facilities, training, and frequently arrange awareness-building campaigns regarding rural non-point source pollution hazards and improve the cognition level of farmers. The agriculture extension department should strengthen the agricultural value chain facilities to make farmers fully realize the importance of EFT. Government should promote and extend the supports for availing new and innovative EFT at a reasonable price. Moreover, cooperative, financial, and credit organizations need to lead for the smooth transition of EFT. The agricultural cooperatives and formal risk-taking networks should act responsibly for shaping the behavioral factors of farmers.

Market-based initiatives like agriculture value chain (AVC) are becoming progressively pervasive to support smallholder rural farmers and assist them in entering larger market interventions and providing a pathway of enhancing their socioeconomic well-being. Moreover, it may also foster staggering effects towards the post-era poverty alleviation in rural areas and possessed a significant theoretical and practical influence for modern agricultural development. The prime objective of the study is to explore the effects of smallholder farmers’ participation in the agricultural value chain for availing rural development and poverty alleviation. Specifically, we have crafted the assessment employing pre-production (improved fertilizers usage), in-production (modern preservation technology), and post-production (supply chain) participation and interventions of smallholder farmers. The empirical data has been collected from a micro survey dataset of 623 kiwifruit farmers from July to September in Shaanxi, China. We have employed propensity score matching (PSM), probit, and OLS models to explore the multidimensional poverty reduction impact and heterogeneity of farmers’ participation in the agricultural value chain. The results show that the total number of poor farmers who have experienced one-dimensional and two-dimensional poverty is relatively high (66.3%). We also find that farmers’ participation in agricultural value chain activities has a significant poverty reduction effect. The multidimensional poverty level of farmers using improved fertilizer, organizational acquisition, and using storage technology (compared with non-participating farmers) decreased by 30.1%, 46.5%, and 25.0%, respectively. The multidimensional poverty reduction degree of male farmers using improved fertilizer and participating in the organizational acquisition is greater than that of women. The multidimensional poverty reduction degree of female farmers using storage and fresh-keeping technology has a greater impact than the males using storage and improved storage technology. Government should widely promote the value chain in the form of pre-harvest, production, and post-harvest technology. The public–private partnership should also be strengthened for availing innovative technologies and infrastructure development.

The adoption of Internet and Information Technology (IIT) in organizations has been growing at a staggering pace. In agriculture, IIT has emerged from the prospects of modern agricultural structure, which profoundly bring revolution in the way of agribusiness. While the impacts of IIT for selecting productive sales and marketing channels is evidenced by the substantial literature in the field, there is a crucial research scope of inclusive analytical views, especially in an economics context. The prime objective of the article is to assess the impacts of IIT for choosing a productive sales and marketing channel. Moreover, we tend to find whether the usage of IIT can eventually foster the profitability of the farmers. The empirical set of data is collected from a cross-sectional survey conducted in Shandong province, China. We utilize the Ordinary Least-Squares (OLS) regression, propensity score matching (PSM), and Heckman’s two-stage regression approaches to craft the findings. The greater extent of the use of IIT, the more significant and positive the impact of agricultural income is. After using the Heckman regression and PSM model, IIT’s use significantly increases the efficiency for selecting the sales channel, and the impact on agricultural income is also prominent (around 40%). We also find that the supporting and nonagricultural income exceeded 30%. Finally, the outcomes of the study reveal significant positive impacts for selecting productive sales and marketing channels. On the basis of these findings, it is suggested that the government and relevant departments should strengthen the construction of agricultural information platforms and websites. Authorities should also extend the training facilities of fruit farmers regarding the use of IIT, which could be useful to boost the capability of fruit farmers to develop markets and promote the value chain.

Environmentally friendly technologies have long been recognized as a widespread phenomenon working within the functions and performance of farms. Farmer’s cooperative organization might profoundly foster the environmentally friendly technologies (EFT) and availing competitive advantage to the farmer. Illustrated by the natural-resource-based view of the farm (NRBV), this study examined the influence of organizational support, organizational norms, and organizational learning on adopting EFT and proposed a model quantifying the impacts of these approaches towards availing competitive capabilities (i.e., cost, quality, flexibility, and delivery). The framework is empirically endorsed by employing the partial least squares approach to structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) with the help of a household survey from a spectrum of 292 farmers of 38 kiwifruit cooperatives of Meixian County, China, from August to September 2020. The findings demonstrate that organizational support, organizational norms, and organizational learning positively influence EFT. Moreover, the study found EFT positively impacts product cost, product quality, product delivery, and production flexibility. Interestingly, the relationship between the adoption of environmentally friendly technologies and the competitive capabilities of kiwifruit farmers of Meixian is positively significant. The study proposes several policy recommendations emphasizing the role of organizations in the form of farmer’s cooperatives in boosting farmers to engage in proenvironmental behavior and, therefore, shifting the trends of future research directions on the adoption of environmentally friendly technologies.

The value chain comprises several factors and activities useful for strengthening production and distribution by connecting producers with suppliers, intermediaries, and marketplaces and collaboratively creating added value for products or goods. However, the values of agricultural products mostly depend on various factors and actors, which should be linked together for fostering added values. Thus, there may be strong ground for facilitating a smooth transition of the agricultural value chain (AVC) within the prospects of emerging countries. It could be a key means of promoting a profound connection between smallholder farmers and modern agriculture facilities. It could be especially crucial for the highly perishable and high-value product such as fruits. The main aims of the study are to evaluate the factors influencing smallholder apple farmers’ participation in the agricultural value chain and determine whether participation in AVC improves farmers’ production performance. The empirical setup of the study was chosen based on survey data of apple growers in Shandong, China. The propensity score matching (PSM) and inverse probability weighted regression adjustment (IPWRA) models were employed to craft the study’s outcomes. The main conclusions are as follows. (1) Fruit farmers’ gender, total household expenditure, housing value, planting scale, planting years, degree of specialization, days of family labour input, and total days of employment have significant effects on their participation in AVC activities. (2) Fruit farmers’ usage of improved fertilizers and organization participation supports a higher yield and net income per acre. (3) Participating in two kinds of AVC can significantly improve the yield per acre and net income per acre compared with only using one type of AVC (improved fertilizer). Policy makers should improve the existing policy by eliminating institutional barriers and enhancing human factors for farmers to participate in high-value chain activities. Governments should extend technical support, and enhance training facilities, and comprehensively promote the AVC among smallholder farmers. Finally, farmers’ organizations (e.g., cooperatives and credit organizations) should come forward to help facilitate the effectiveness of AVC.

The prime goals of this article are to classify farmers’ production structures in different regions through comparative analysis and propose a structural framework that can quantify the transformation and upgrade of the vegetable industry in Shaanxi. The study utilized New Structural Economics (NSE) theory to construct the theoretical model, and the empirical data set has been crafted from 1992 vegetable growers in the Shaanxi, Hebei, and Shandong provinces. We qualitatively evaluated the potentiality of the Shaanxi vegetable industry, facilitating an industrial upgrade by drawing on the development experience of other regions. More specifically, we utilized the tomato growers to construct a five-step analysis method to transform and upgrade the vegetable industries. This article found that the chosen three provinces have structural differences and similarities in their production sides, and, compared with Hebei and Shandong, the vegetable industry in Shaanxi is still in the catching-up stage. Hebei has similar planting characteristics to Shaanxi, but the production characteristics of growers in Shaanxi are quite different from those in Shandong. Therefore, tomato growers in Hebei are the desired learning object for growers in Shaanxi. By learning planting experience from Hebei growers, tomato growers in the Shaanxi Province can improve their yield and product quality. We found that Shaanxi farmers have 15.57 percent improvement potential in improving crop management and rational allocation of production materials. Proper information-sharing platforms should be implemented to grasp consumption trends on the demand side and guide industrial upgrading.