Addressing Global Challenges Through Local Government Governance: Enhancing Agricultural Resilience in China’s 31 Provinces

Abstract

Facing supply shocks such as tightening global resource environments, weak agricultural economic value-added, and diminishing demographic dividends, enhancing agricultural resilience has become an essential path to ensure food security and sustainable social development. Based on provincial panel data from China spanning 2011 to 2020, this paper systematically examines the enhancement effect of local government governance capacity and its multidimensional heterogeneity on agricultural resilience through visualization, sensitivity analysis, and internal mechanism analysis. The research findings are as follows: First, local government governance capacity significantly enhances agricultural resilience, although its industrial prosperity dimension has not reached the expected significant level and exhibits complex dynamic connections across different economic and functional zones. Second, local governments can effectively improve agricultural resilience by introducing digital economy, with the risk resistance index increasing from 0.217 to 0.269 percentage points compared to traditional local government governance models, representing a substantial increase of 28.57%, while still showing high potential value for future development. Third, labor force quality has failed to optimize the effect of local governments on enhancing agricultural resilience, and has even triggered problems such as resource misallocation and inefficiency. This research has significant reference value for countries facing agricultural development challenges globally and provides new insights for achieving food security and sustainable agricultural development goals within the United Nations Sustainable Development framework.