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[Objective] Conservation tillage technology, as a comprehensive technology beneficial to ecology, environment, and soil health of farmland, is an important tool to improve the quality of arable land and is related to sustainable agricultural development. [Methods] Based on 1268 questionnaires from maize farmers in the Shaanxi, Gansu and Ningxia regions of the Loess Plateau, after measuring agricultural production efficiency using a stochastic frontier (SFA) model, we used the endogenous transformation regression model (ESRM) to test the effect of farming households’ conservation tillage technology adoption on agricultural production efficiency and the inverse probability weighted regression adjustment (IPWRA) model to estimate the effect of farming households’ conservation tillage technology adoption on income generation and poverty reduction. [Results] The results indicate that: (1) The adoption of conservation tillage technology can significantly improve the agricultural production efficiency of farm households, and on the basis of considering the counterfactual situation, the production efficiency of the farmers who adopted conservation tillage technology increased by 2.9% compared with those of the non-adopted farmer households. (2) Conservation tillage technology adoption had a robust positive contribution to the poverty reduction effect of farm household income increase, with a significant increase of 8.9% in per capita net household income for conservation tillage technology adopters compared to non-adopters, and the validity and reliability of the results were further verified using different matching methods of the propensity matching score (PSM). (3) Compared with the adoption of a single conservation tillage technology, the increase in productivity of farmers’ multiple combinations of conservation tillage technology adoption is more significant; compared with Gansu Province and Ningxia Province, farmers in Shaanxi Province have a more significant effect on increasing income and reducing poverty by adopting conservation tillage technology. [Conclusion] Arable land is the key to food production, and the government actively promotes conservation tillage technology and motivates farmers to adopt it, which not only helps to improve crop yields, save labor, increase agricultural productivity, improve economic benefits, and reduce poverty incidence, but also preserves water and fertilizer, improves soil structure, and protects the environment, which is an important guiding reference for the further promotion of conservation tillage technology.

Since there is a serious problem of land degradation and soil erosion in the Loess Plateau region of China, soil and water conservation technology (SWC) is necessary to protect land resources and reduce water loss, so as to promote the development of sustainable agriculture. By using the binary probit model, this study analyzes the effect of organizational, economic and self-empowerment on the adoption of soil and water conservation technology in the Loess Plateau region of China. The results indicated that all these empowerments have significant positive effects on the adoption of SWC, and there are significant gender differences in the impact. Organizational empowerment had a more significant impact on the adoption of SWC by male household heads, while economic empowerment and self-empowerment had a more significant effect on the adoption of SWC by female household heads. Therefore, more organizational and financial support for farmers is needed, and farmers themselves should have more confidence in the adoption of new technologies. Furthermore, given the gender differences in the impact, more gender equality should be ensured in the promotion of agricultural technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studying the dynamic duration of technology adoption helps farmers weigh and select different attributes and stages of conservation tillage techniques. In this study, non-parametric K-M survival analysis and discrete duration models were employed to estimate the time taken by farmers in the Yellow River Basin region to transition from awareness to the adoption of conservation tillage techniques between 2002 and 2020. The results indicate (1) The duration from awareness to adoption of conservation tillage technology is relatively short. (2) The likelihood of farmers postponing adoption decisions is highest in the initial 10 years and gradually decreases over time, suggesting negative time dependency. (3) Controlling for proportional hazards assumptions, it was found that factors such as education level and social learning positively influence the duration from awareness to adoption of conservation tillage techniques. Extreme weather variations and household labor migration delay the adoption time for farmers. In the process of promoting and implementing conservation tillage techniques, it is essential to consider the issue of intertemporal technology choice, stimulate farmers' intrinsic demand, shorten the time interval from awareness to adoption, and ultimately improve technology adoption rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]