Global agriculture faces the dual challenges of resource constraints and international competition, making the transition from quantitative expansion to quality upgrading a central imperative. While trade competitiveness is widely considered a key driver of agricultural transformation, the pathways and mechanisms through which it influences agricultural quality upgrading are far more complex than conventionally understood. Against this backdrop, this study constructs a moderated nonlinear mediation theoretical framework. Empirical analysis based on China’s provincial panel data (2014–2023) yields three key findings: (1) Trade competitiveness exerts a significant inverted U-shaped effect on high-quality agricultural development, revealing a dynamic trade-off between “competitive escape” and “competitive suppression.” (2) Optimization of the Agricultural Sectoral Structure serves as a mediating pathway, and this mediation itself exhibits nonlinear characteristics, further underscoring the nuanced nature of “structural dividends.” (3) Regional innovation capacity significantly moderates the latter stage of this pathway (from Optimization of the Agricultural Sectoral Structure to quality development). Viewed through the lens of appropriate technology theory, a robust regional innovation system can deploy context-appropriate technologies and knowledge, thereby mitigating the potential adverse impacts of agricultural structural transformation on quality-related outcomes. This research thus provides a new strategic framework for achieving sustainable, high-quality agricultural growth.

Agricultural green total factor productivity is central to reconciling agricultural growth with increasingly binding resource and environmental constraints. Digital inclusive finance may facilitate this transition by relaxing financing constraints and expanding access to productive technologies, yet its contribution to agricultural green productivity remains insufficiently understood. To address this gap, this study develops an analytical framework that identifies technological innovation as a potential mediating transmission channel and agricultural mechanization as the threshold condition in the relationship between digital inclusive finance and agricultural green total factor productivity. Drawing on a balanced panel of 30 Chinese provinces, the empirical analysis employs a two-way fixed-effects model, mediation analysis, and a panel threshold model to test the proposed relationships. The results yield three main findings. First, digital inclusive finance is positively associated with agricultural green total factor productivity, and this relationship remains robust after robustness checks and endogeneity analyses. Second, mediation analysis provides evidence consistent with a positive mediating role of technological innovation in the relationship between digital inclusive finance and agricultural green total factor productivity. Third, the association between digital inclusive finance and agricultural green total factor productivity exhibits significant nonlinear heterogeneity across agricultural mechanization regimes. The regime-specific analysis further indicates that such heterogeneity is more evident in the relationships involving digital inclusive finance, whereas the relationship between technological innovation and agricultural green total factor productivity does not differ significantly across regimes. These findings clarify the heterogeneous relationships among digital inclusive finance, technological innovation, and agricultural green productivity and provide empirical support for coordinating financial policy with agricultural modernization strategies.