How new quality productivity shapes agricultural carbon emissions in China: the masking effect of agricultural mechanization

Agricultural low-carbonization, serving as a critical pathway for achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), extends beyond being a mere technological challenge to fundamentally encompass both the paradigm shift in developmental philosophy and the systemic synergy of institutional frameworks. This study explores how new quality productivity influences agricultural carbon emissions, utilizing Chinese provincial panel data (2012–2022) and a Two-way Fixed Effects model to analyze its impacts through sustainability-oriented lenses. Empirical results demonstrate that new quality productivity exerts a significant reducing effect on agricultural carbon emissions, with each unit increase correlating to a 20.2% reduction. Mechanistic analysis reveals a dual pathway: facility agricultural technology promotion, which drives a 2.8% indirect emission reduction through resource-efficient and environmentally friendly production systems aligned with sustainable development goals. However, this positive effect is partially offset by a “masking effect” from agricultural mechanization, stemming from its fossil fuel dependence that contradicts low-carbon transition objectives. Regional heterogeneity analysis highlights pronounced disparities in sustainability outcomes: the western region benefits most from the emission reduction effects, reflecting adaptive capacity to low-carbon technologies, while the eastern region shows an unexpected promoting effect, attributed to energy path dependencies in intensive production models that hinder sustainable transformation. Production process analysis further indicates that new quality productivity effectively reduces emissions in high-carbon input stages such as fertilizer and pesticide use, but its impact is weaker in Tillage applications, pointing to unaddressed sustainability challenges in these areas Building on these findings, this study underscores that realizing the full decarbonization potential of new quality productivity requires navigating constraints posed by technical trajectories, regional resource endowments, and production process characteristics within a sustainable development framework. It not only enriches the carbon reduction mechanisms of new quality productivity in agriculture, providing clear policy targets for agricultural decarbonization policy-making, but also offers theoretical insights and practical experience for developing countries to achieve agricultural sustainability.