This study examines the economic and environmental impacts of green production practices among farmers. It aims to contribute to sustainable agricultural development, mitigate agricultural non-point source (NPS) pollution, and align environmental protection with economic growth. This paper utilizes survey data from 1345 farm households in the main rice production areas of Jiangxi Province, China, using the example of reduced fertilizer application (RFA) among rice farmers. This study constructs a slack-based measure data envelopment analysis (DEA—SBM) model with undesirable outputs to measure environmental effects and applies an endogenous switching regression model (ESRM) to test the economic and environmental effects of farmers’ adoption of green production technologies. We found the following: (1) The RFA behavior of farmers has a significant positive impact on their net profit per hectare (NPH), helping farmers increase their income, with the increase ranging from 2.05% to 6.54%. (2) Farmers’ RFA behavior has a significant positive impact on agricultural green productivity (AGP), contributing to the improvement of the environment, ranging from 44.09% to 45.35%. (3) A heterogeneity analysis found inconsistencies in the income-enhancing and environmental-enhancing effects at different quantiles of NPH and AGP. Therefore, attention should be placed on improving the agricultural product quality supervision system under the market circulation mechanism, creating land scale conditions conducive to the promotion and application of fertilizer reduction technologies and promoting the implementation of externality internalization compensation systems.

Evaluating the economic and environmental effects of farmers' green production behaviors holds important reference value for promoting sustainable agricultural development, alleviating agricultural non-point source (NPS) pollution, and achieving the organic combination of environmental protection and economic development. This paper utilizes survey data from 1,345 farm households in the main rice production areas of Jiangxi Province, China, using the example of reduced fertilizer application (RFA) among rice farmers. By constructing a DEA—SBM model with undesirable outputs to measure environmental effects, and applying an endogenous switching model to test the economic and environmental effects of farmers' adoption of green production technologies. The study found that: (1)The behavior of RFA by farmers has a significant positive impact on their net profit per mu(NPPA), helping farmers increase their income, with the increase ranging from 2.05% to 6.54%. (2)The behavior of RFA by farmers has a significant positive impact on agricultural green productivity(AGP), contributing to the improvement of the environment, with the improvement ranging from 44.09% to 45.35%. (3)Heterogeneity analysis found inconsistencies in the income-enhancing and environmental-enhancing effects at different quantiles of NPPA and AGP. Therefore, attention should be placed on improving the agricultural product quality supervision system under the market circulation mechanism, creating land scale conditions conducive to the promotion and application of fertilizer reduction technologies, and promoting the implementation of externality internalization compensation systems.

As the fundamental operational units of agricultural production, farmers make production decisions based on the principle of household income maximization. This study draws on data from a micro-level survey of rice farmers conducted in Jiangxi Province from November 2022 to August 2023, which yielded 1014 valid observations to examine two rice cultivation patterns—double-cropping rice (DCR) and rice–rapeseed rotation (RRR)—in order to analyze the economic effects of farmers’ cultivation choices on rice production. Additionally, a heterogeneity analysis is performed, taking into account labor force size, intergenerational differences, and operational scale. The results indicate that (1) farmers adopting the RRR pattern experience a significant increase in per-unit-area profit, thereby enhancing household income, with gains ranging from 16.95% to 153.20%. (2) The heterogeneity analysis reveals that the economic effects of labor availability, generational differences, and operational scale are not uniform. Ample labor resources strongly support rice production; older-generation farmers’ intensive farming methods are more suitable for RRR, and land expansion is constrained by scale thresholds. Based on these findings, it is recommended to optimize the allocation of production factors such as land and labor, and to guide farmers in adapting their rice cultivation strategies accordingly.