The Impact Mechanism of Agricultural New Quality Productivity on Food Security: An Empirical Study with Socialized Agricultural Machinery Services as a Mediating Effect

This study employed provincial panel data from 2013 to 2022 and adopted a two-way fixed effects model alongside a mechanism testing model to analyze the impact of new-quality agricultural productivity on food security and its underlying mechanisms. The findings reveal that: (1) Agricultural new quality productivity significantly enhanced food security, a conclusion robust to multiple sensitivity tests; (2) The positive effect operated through the mediating channel of socialized agricultural machinery services; (3) Heterogeneity analysis indicated that, agricultural new quality productivity markedly improved food security in major grain-producing regions and areas with high fiscal support for agriculture, whereas its impact was statistically insignificant in non-grain-producing regions and regions with limited fiscal resources. Therefore, confronted with mounting pressures on national food security, policymakers should prioritize context-specific development of agricultural new quality productivity, amplify its role in driving agricultural modernization, rigorously implement the “storing grain through technology” strategy, adaptively optimize farming systems and crop structures, and holistically strengthen the foundation of food security.