Coupling Coordination of Agricultural New Quality Productive Forces and Green Development Performance in China

Whether agricultural new quality productive forces (ANQPFs) and agricultural green development performance (AGDP) can evolve in a coordinated manner is an important issue in the transformation of agricultural development modes. This study aims to identify their overall and dimension-specific coordination characteristics and state-transition patterns. Using data for 30 provincial-level regions in China from 2013 to 2023, this study constructs an ANQPF indicator system, measures agricultural green total factor productivity (AGTFP) under resource and environmental constraints as a proxy for AGDP using a global non-radial VRS-SBM-GML model, and employs a coupling coordination model and Markov chain to examine overall and dimension-specific coordination relationships and state transitions. The results show that both ANQPF and AGDP generally increased, although their growth trajectories were not fully synchronized. The overall coupling coordination degree rose from 0.3631 to 0.6072, indicating a transition from mild imbalance to primary coordination. Coordination involving new-quality means of labor and new-quality objects of labor improved relatively rapidly, and both entered the primary coordination stage in 2023. By contrast, the coordination degree for the new-quality labor force was 0.5992 and remained at the barely coordinated level. Coordination states exhibited strong persistence, and transitions occurred mainly between adjacent stages. The principal findings remain stable after changing the weighting method, returns-to-scale assumption, specification of undesirable outputs, and sample period. These findings indicate that the alignment between upgraded agricultural production conditions and improved resource–environmental performance has strengthened, while human capital and technology-application capacity remain relative weaknesses. Policy efforts should therefore strengthen the development of the new-quality labor force, promote synergy among production factors, and improve the dynamic monitoring of coordination states.