China’s sustainable development goals and carbon neutrality targets cannot be achieved without revolutionary transitions of the agricultural sector. The rapid development of digital technologies is believed to play a huge role in this revolution. The ongoing prevention and control of COVID-19 has greatly boosted the penetration of digital technology services in all areas of society, and sustainable transformation driven by digital technologies and services is rapidly becoming an area of innovation and research. Studies have shown that the rapid advancement of digitalization is also accompanied by a series of new governance challenges and problems: (1) unclear strategic orientation and inadequate policy and regulatory responses; (2) various stakeholders have not formed a sustainable community of interest; (3) information explosion is accompanied by information fragmentation and digital divide between countries and populations within countries. Meanwhile, current research has focused more on the role of digital services in urban governance and industrial development and lacks systematic research on its role in sustainable agricultural and rural development. To address the realities faced by different stakeholders in the process of digital transformation of agriculture, this paper aims to propose an inclusive analytical framework based on the meta-governance theory to identify and analyze the demand, supply, actor networks, and incentives in the digital technology-and-services-driven sustainable agricultural transformation, starting from the goals and connotations of sustainable agricultural and rural transformation and the interactions among different stakeholders in governing information flows. This analytical framework is further applied to analyze the cases of China and the EU. Although China and the EU represent different development phases and policy contexts, the framework is valid for capturing the characteristics of information flows and actor networks along the flows. It is concluded that a common information platform based on the stakeholder network would benefit all stakeholders, help reach common framing of issues, and maintain a dynamic exchange of information. Depending on the country context, different types of stakeholders may play different roles in creating, supervising, and maintaining such platforms. Digital infrastructures/products as hardware and farmers digital capacity as ‘software’ are the two wings for digital sustainable transformation. Innovative incentives from different countries may inspire each other. In any case, farmers’ actual farming behavior changes should be an important criterion for evaluating the effects and effectiveness of digital transition governance.

We used a constant total N application base rate to conduct a two-year field experiment comparing the effects of three organic fertilizers (rapeseed meal (RSM), soybean meal (SBM), and cattle manure (CM)) on the crop yield, economic growth, and soil quality of a winter wheat-summer maize rotation system. Winter wheat and summer maize in rapeseed meal treatment (RSMT), soybean meal treatment (SBMT), and cattle manure treatment (CMT) showed yield increases of 161%, 299%, and 256%, respectively, when compared to no organic fertilizer treatment (CK) (P < 0.05). The annual net incomes of SBMT and CMT were 1.46 and 1.42 times higher, respectively, than RSMT. Compared to the results of the CK group, RSM, SBM, and CM stimulated the soil physically, chemically, and biologically. We found the highest soil macroaggregate proportions, soil organic matter (SOM) levels, total N (TN) levels, and phospholipid fatty acid (PLFA) levels in SBMT. The highest soil pH, microbial biomass carbon (MBC) levels, and microbial biomass nitrogen (MBN) levels were observed in CMT. We used a soil quality index (SQI) to evaluate soil quality. After the two-year fertilization treatments, we calculated the SQI using a minimum data set (MDS). We used SOM levels and actinomycete quantity for the MDS properties. The SQI values were significantly different across the four treatments, with the highest values occurring in SBMT, then CMT and RSMT. In conclusion, SBM and CM were more effective than RSM at maintaining crop yield, economic growth, and soil quality.

Soil mulching is one of the common measures applied in organic agricultural production which could replace plastic films and protect the environment. In order to fully evaluate the effects of different straw mulching thicknesses on soil health, maize straw was mulched with the thicknesses of 0 cm (CK), 2 cm, 4 cm and 6 cm on soil surface to assess the effects on soil temperature (ST) and moisture (SM), soil pH, soil organic carbon (SOC), total nitrogen (TN), C/N, soil aggregates and soil bulk density (SBD) in a temperate organic vineyard. We found that straw mulching had a significant regulating effect, with soil moisture being elevated with increasing mulching thickness by 5.8%, 9.0% and 11.1% compared with CK. The soil SOC content increased by 3.0%, 2.4% and 2.3%. Although soil pH and C/N significantly (p < 0.05) increased, they fluctuated with increasing mulch thickness. Straw mulching also increased the content of >2 mm soil particle size and elevated the mean weight diameter (MWD) and geometric mean diameter (GMD). The increasing mulching thickness prolonged the effect on the stability of soil aggregates. The 4 cm maize straw mulching thickness has the best effect for ecologically and environmentally managing warm-temperate organic vineyards so it may have a great application prospect on a global scale.

Biodegradable household garbage contains a large amount of nitrogen, which could be used as organic fertilizer to produce organic food and significantly reduce synthetic nitrogen fertilizers. There is limited information on how large the nitrogen reservoir of biodegradable household garbage is in a certain country or region. Here we took China as a case, analyzed the amount of biodegradable household garbage resources and their nitrogen reservoirs. It was noted that the biodegradable household garbage mainly included food waste, waste paper and wood chips, with the amount being 31.56, 29.55, and 6.45 × 10⁶ t·a⁻¹, respectively. Accordingly, the nitrogen reservoirs were 65.31 × 10⁴, 6.80 × 10⁴, and 3.81 × 10⁴ t·a⁻¹ in China. The nitrogen reservoir of food waste accounted for 86% of the total nitrogen reservoir of biodegradable household garbage, which was equivalent to 11% of the amount of actual absorption for synthetic nitrogen fertilizers (6.20 × 10⁶ t·a⁻¹) by agriculture plants in China. Our findings provided a scientific basis for the classification and utilization of biodegradable household garbage.