China’s agricultural sector faces unprecedented challenges due to rapid urbanization. The rural labor force is declining, and the agricultural workforce is aging significantly. This labor shortage, worsened by the exodus of agricultural technicians, threatens food security and agricultural sustainability. This study analyzes data from 30 Chinese provinces from 2011 to 2022 using a transcendental logarithmic production function. The research examines how agricultural socialized services can alleviate rural labor shortages by improving production efficiency. It also investigates these services’ impact on labor input intensity and grain yield across different crops and regions. The results show that socialized agricultural services effectively promote food production. At the national level, these services can promote a 54.4% increase in total crop production. Agricultural socialized services are gradually developing toward labor substitution. The significant negative interaction coefficient between services and labor confirms this substitution effect. The input–output elasticity of these services is positive for total crop and cereal crop production in major production areas. It also shows positive elasticity for total crop and tuber crop production in non-major production areas. The national-level “service-labor” technical elasticity of substitution maintains values above zero, averaging 0.37 across regions, offering an effective solution to agricultural labor shortages. This study identifies a threshold effect where these services’ impact on food production significantly increases with business scale expansion. These findings highlight the importance of optimizing agricultural socialized services through strengthened service systems, differentiated regional strategies, technological innovation, and comprehensive support policies. Such targeted approaches would enhance substitution effects and service efficiency, addressing labor shortages and boosting food production.

China’s rapid urbanization has driven significant economic growth, but has also resulted in resource depletion, ecological degradation, and inefficient land use, collectively hindering sustainable development. In response, pilot policies for “low-carbon cities” and “carbon emissions trading” have been implemented to enhance urban land use efficiency. This study evaluates the green land use efficiency of 282 prefectural-level cities in China from 2006 to 2023, using the non-expected output super-efficiency SBM model. Some cities serve as pilot sites for both “low-carbon cities” and “carbon emissions trading.” A multi-period Difference-in-Differences model is employed to empirically assess the impact and mechanisms of this “dual-pilot” policy on green land use efficiency. The findings indicate the following: (1) The dual-pilot policy significantly improves green land use efficiency, with coordinated implementation yielding greater efficiency gains than single-policy approaches. (2) Mechanism analysis suggests that these policies enhance efficiency by promoting technological innovation and industrial agglomeration. (3) Heterogeneity analysis reveals that the policy’s impact is stronger in western regions, cities with high human capital, large urban centers, areas with stringent environmental regulations, and non-resource-dependent cities. (4) Spatial econometric analysis shows that while low-carbon policies improve local land use efficiency, they also create a siphoning effect on neighboring areas, with positive impacts observed within a 100–600 km range, diminishing and turning negative beyond 600 km. These insights provide a valuable framework for sustainable urban planning, emphasizing the importance of adaptive, context-sensitive policy design in addressing complex ecological and economic challenges.

The return migration of agricultural labor has emerged as a notable demographic shift in rural China, yet its association with farmland abandonment has received limited empirical attention. Using household-level microdata from the China Household Finance Survey (CHFS), this study empirically examines the association between agricultural labor return migration on farmland abandonment among rural households and explores the underlying channels. The results indicate a negative association between agricultural labor return migration and the area of farmland abandoned by rural households, and this pattern remains stable across a series of robustness checks. Mechanism analyses suggest that this association is consistent with two channels, namely farmland transfer-out and household investment in farmland. This negative association appears stronger in villages with well-developed specialty agricultural industries, relatively limited non-agricultural employment opportunities, and village cooperatives. These patterns suggest that policy efforts could pay greater attention to the role of labor return migration in improving the efficiency of rural farmland resource utilization. A combination of policy measures is recommended to improve farmland transfer markets, strengthen incentives for agricultural investment, and foster locally adapted specialty rural industries.