The “Last Mile” Problem Holding Back Sustainable Farming

Governments worldwide are spending heavily to persuade farmers to use more sustainable technologies, but a persistent problem receives far less attention: farmers may adopt a new practice once and then abandon it. A new study from China suggests that the durability of agricultural transformation depends less on one-off technology promotion than on the institutions surrounding farmers after adoption.

The paper, "How Agricultural Industry Organizations' Support Influences Farmers' Sustained Adoption of Sustainable Agricultural Technologies: The Mediating Role of Government Regulation Perception," published in Agriculture, was authored by Qi Li, Shujing Jia, Honghong Yang, Muhammad Umer and Mei Qu of Northwest A&F University.

Using survey data from 484 kiwifruit farmers in Shaanxi Province, the researchers examine continued use of three sustainable agricultural technologies: soil testing and formulated fertilization, drip irrigation and orchard grass cover. Farmers who receive substantive support from agricultural industry organizations, such as cooperatives, agribusinesses and family farms, are significantly more likely to keep using sustainable technologies. Just as importantly, these organizations appear to work as policy intermediaries, helping government regulations, incentives and technical guidance reach farmers in ways that influence long-term behavior.

Green Technology Fails When Policy Stops at the Point of Adoption

Sustainable agriculture is often measured through installation counts, subsidy uptake or the number of farmers trying a new technique. But those indicators can create a false impression of progress. Environmental gains from water-saving irrigation, precision fertilization or soil-cover practices depend on repeated use over multiple seasons.

The study explicitly shifts attention from initial adoption to sustained adoption. Farmers were counted as sustained adopters only if they had continuously used a technology for at least two years. The distinction is particularly important for smallholders, who account for a very large share of farms globally and often face capital shortages, fragmented land, weak access to information and limited capacity to navigate government programs. The paper argues that these constraints help explain why sustainable agricultural technologies remain difficult to sustain in developing and transition economies.

The empirical results reinforce that concern. Only 11.6% of farmers in the sample reported receiving substantive organizational support such as training, input supply, information services or marketing assistance. Yet that support was associated with a 9.6 percentage-point increase in sustained adoption of soil testing and formulated fertilization, an 11.2-point increase for drip irrigation and an 8.7-point increase for orchard grass cover.

The Most Powerful Role of Cooperatives May Be Translating Policy Into Practice

Cooperatives and agribusinesses can distribute inputs or offer training, but they can also function as an institutional bridge between governments and individual farmers. In effect, they translate policies into something farmers can understand, access and act upon.

The researchers test three channels: farmers' perceptions of binding regulation, such as production standards and compliance requirements; incentive regulation, including subsidies and cost-sharing; and guiding regulation, such as training, demonstrations, technical extension and market development. Organizational support was positively associated with all three.

Guidance appears especially important. For soil testing and formulated fertilization, guiding regulation accounted for 19% of the estimated organizational-support effect; for drip irrigation, it accounted for 21.9%, the largest mediation shares among the regulatory pathways examined.

The finding has strong development-policy relevance. Governments frequently assume that announcing a subsidy, issuing a production standard or creating an extension program means farmers have effectively received the intervention. In reality, administrative distance, information barriers and transaction costs can weaken policy implementation at village level.

Agricultural organizations may therefore serve as the "last mile" of agricultural governance, converting public policy into training sessions, equipment-sharing arrangements, certification opportunities, production standards and market incentives. For countries with millions of geographically dispersed smallholders, strengthening such intermediary institutions may be more scalable than relying exclusively on government extension systems.

Different Green Technologies Need Different Incentives

Another important finding is that farmers do not respond uniformly across technologies. The three practices in the study impose very different burdens. Soil testing and formulated fertilization is knowledge-intensive. Drip irrigation requires capital investment. Orchard grass cover is comparatively labor-intensive and easier to demonstrate visually.

The results show that incentive support, including subsidies and equipment cost-sharing, was positively associated with sustained adoption of soil testing and drip irrigation, with marginal effects of 12.6 and 14.8 percentage points respectively. By contrast, guiding support, such as training and demonstrations, had its strongest effect on orchard grass cover, increasing sustained adoption by 28.8 percentage points. Supervisory support alone did not significantly promote sustained use of any of the three technologies.

It undermines the logic of blanket agricultural-support schemes. A technology requiring expensive infrastructure is unlikely to be sustained through training alone, while a relatively simple practice may not need large subsidies if farmers can see how it works and believe it will deliver benefits.

The study also finds that both market-oriented entities and collaborative organizations can support continued adoption, but through different strengths. Market-linked organizations may offer contracts, quality premiums and access to higher-value buyers, while cooperatives and family-farm organizations can build collective capacity, information sharing and resilience.

For policymakers, the implication is to design technology-specific and institution-specific support, rather than treating all sustainable farming practices and all producer organizations as interchangeable.

For the Global South, the Missing Infrastructure May Be Institutional

The findings extend well beyond China, although they should not be generalized mechanically. The study is based on a cross-sectional survey of kiwifruit farmers in one Chinese province, and the authors acknowledge that results may differ across crops and regions. Self-reported measures of regulation perception and the simultaneous measurement of support and adoption also limit causal interpretation, despite robustness checks and an instrumental-variable analysis.

Still, the development lesson is highly relevant. Across Africa, South Asia and other smallholder-dominated regions, governments and development agencies regularly promote climate-smart agriculture, efficient irrigation, improved soil management and reduced chemical use. The technologies themselves are increasingly available. The harder problem is creating conditions that make farmers willing and able to use them year after year.

It means policy must move beyond distributing equipment or subsidizing first-time adoption. Governments need organizations capable of providing follow-up technical assistance, reducing transaction costs, helping farmers access incentives and connecting sustainable production to better markets.

The authors recommend evaluating agricultural organizations on actual service quality rather than formal existence, strengthening underperforming cooperatives or allowing inactive ones to exit, and tailoring organizational support to particular technologies.

There are also risks. Greater reliance on market-oriented agribusinesses may create dependency if farmers become tied to buyers that later change procurement strategies or terminate contracts. Collaborative organizations may provide stronger long-term resilience but weaker immediate access to market premiums.