Mechanisms for agricultural companies in enabling smallholders’ integration into modern agriculture

Smallholder articulation of modern agriculture is an important foundation for the realization of agricultural modernization, and in the context of the market playing a decisive role in resource allocation, can agricultural companies with market advantages promote smallholder articulation of modern agricultural production? By constructing a theoretical framework of agricultural companies and small farmers' modern agricultural production, and on the basis of the micro dataset of the Third Agricultural Census, the role and influence mechanism of agricultural companies on small farmers' articulation of modern agricultural production are empirically examined from the viewpoint of production factor allocation. The results of the study show that agricultural companies can significantly influence the resource allocation mode of small farmers and help small farmers connect to modern agricultural production by expanding the cultivation area, improving the mechanization level, and upgrading the specialized planting structure and technology level; however, the influence on the greening production of small farmers is not yet significant. Various robustness tests verified the robustness of the above results. However, heterogeneity analysis reveals differing responses among farmers of varying scales and crop types: small-scale farmers benefit more significantly from scale expansion, while larger-scale farmers and those growing cash crops gain greater advantages from mechanization and technology adoption. These findings provide empirical evidence for agricultural companies to assist smallholder farmers in integrating with modern agriculture and formulating differentiated policies.