Improvement or Disruption: How Do Agricultural Machinery Socialization Services Affect the Livelihood Resilience of Smallholder Farmers? Empirical Evidence from the Main Corn-Producing Areas of Northeast China

Abstract

Enhancing the livelihood resilience of smallholder farmers has become a critical challenge in China’s contemporary agricultural development strategy. Agricultural machinery socialization services represent an important policy measure for facilitating smallholder farmers’ integration into modern agriculture and alleviating practical development constraints; however, as a substantial adjustment to farmer livelihood activities, such services may also disrupt smallholder farmers’ existing livelihood equilibria. Using survey data from smallholder farmers in the major corn-producing regions of Northeast China, this study examines the effects of agricultural machinery socialization services on smallholders’ livelihood resilience and explores the underlying mechanisms. The results show that both the breadth and depth of agricultural machinery socialization services significantly enhance smallholders’ livelihood resilience. These effects operate mainly through two pathways: an empowerment mechanism driven by farmland scale management and the professional division of labor in agriculture, and a capacity expansion mechanism driven by the extension and application of agricultural technologies and the development of social networks. Moreover, the influence of agricultural machinery socialization services on smallholders’ livelihood resilience is positively moderated by both internal perceived value and external policy incentives. Heterogeneity analysis further indicates that these services exert stronger effects on smallholder farmers’ buffering and learning capacities than on self-organizing capacity, with more pronounced impacts in plains areas than in hilly and mountainous regions. Accordingly, policy efforts should focus on the core needs of smallholder farmers by accelerating the development of a diversified, differentiated, and multi-tiered agricultural machinery socialization service system, expanding service coverage, improving service quality, and refining service mechanisms to promote sustained improvements in smallholders’ livelihood resilience.