Analysis of the Impact of Digital Technology on the Resilience of Anhui’s Agricultural Industry Chain: Threshold Effect of Relative Grain Yield

Improving the resilience of the agricultural industry chain to frequent external shocks and the intertwined agricultural production risks is critical for ensuring national food security and sustainable agricultural development. Taking the 16 prefecture-level cities in Anhui Province—a major grain-producing region in China—as the research sample, two composite proxy indices were constructed in this study; namely, an agricultural industry chain resilience index built upon aggregate official statistics (rather than direct observed shock-response outcomes) and an index capturing broad rural digital development instead of purely agriculture-specific digital adoption. Based on balanced panel data from 2015 to 2024, two-way fixed-effect, mediation-effect, and panel-threshold models were adopted in this study to examine the association, mediating mechanism, regional heterogeneity, and threshold characteristics conditioned on the relative grain yield. The empirical results show that the rural-oriented digital development index is significantly and robustly positively associated with our composite agricultural industry chain resilience proxy. Although agricultural TFP exhibits a statistically detectable partial mediating pattern in this correlational relationship, the economic magnitude of this indirect channel is extremely modest. As such, this finding indicates a potential theoretical transmission pathway rather than providing definitive empirical evidence for a causal mechanism. The promotion effect exhibits clear regional heterogeneity, with the strongest effect in Northern Anhui, followed by Central Anhui, while the coefficient is positive but insignificant in Southern Anhui. Furthermore, a single-threshold effect of the relative grain yield is identified; that is, the positive association between rural-oriented digital development and resilience proxy cannot be statistically detected when the grain yield remains below the threshold. Only after the agricultural grain yield increases can digital-related rural development release its resilience-related empowering dividends. We note that both composite indices are subject to measurement constraints linked to the local agricultural economic scale and broad rural digital conditions; these limitations are further discussed in the paper. This study provides empirical correlational evidence for the implementation of differentiated digital agriculture policies in major grain-producing provinces.