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Increasing agricultural production and optimizing inorganic fertilizer (IF) use are imperative for agricultural and environmental sustainability. Mobile phone usage (MPU) has the potential to reduce IF application while ensuring environmental and agricultural sustainability goals. The main objectives of this study were to assess MPU, mobile phone promotion policy, and whether the mediation role of human capital can help reduce IF use. This study used baseline regression analysis and propensity score matching, difference-in-differences (PSM-DID) to assess the impact of MPU on IF usage. However, the two-stage instrumental variables method (IVM) was used to study the effects of mobile phone promotion policy on IF usage. This study used a national dataset from 7,987 rural households in Afghanistan to investigate the impacts of MPU and associated promotion policies on IF application. The baseline regression outcomes showed that the MPU significantly reduced IF usage. The evaluation mechanism revealed that mobile phones help reduce IF application by improving the human capital of farmers. Besides, evidence from the DID technique showed that mobile phone promotion policies lowered IF application. These results remained robust after applying the PSM-DID method and two-stage IVM to control endogenous decisions of rural households. This study results imply that enhancing the accessibility of wideband in remote areas, promoting MPU, and increasing investment in information communication technologies (ICTs) infrastructure can help decrease the IF application in agriculture. Thus, the government should invest in remote areas to facilitate access to ICTs, such as having a telephone and access to a cellular and internet network to provide an environment and facility to apply IF effectively. Further, particular policy support must focus on how vulnerable populations access the internet and mobile phone technologies.

Agricultural production cooperatives used to be the “stepchild” of the cooperative movement. Although they stem from a similar long tradition of agricultural service cooperatives, researchers such as Oppenheimer (1896) and Schiller (1969) observed early on that they were not attractive for farmers in villages characterised by family agriculture. In general, it was argued that they were not competitive at all with family farms, but also not corporate farms, thus having no role in agricultural development. Historically, agricultural production cooperatives were formed under specific conditions only. Most prominent were collective farms under the socialist regimes, which were often labelled “agricultural production cooperatives”, although these were by no means of a voluntary nature. However, in recent years, agricultural production cooperatives have been observed in villages characterised by family agriculture. In Chongzhou County (Sichuan Province, China) they cover more than half of the total utilized agricultural area. This research analyses the conditions under which farmers voluntarily join such production cooperatives and how they assess their membership in them. We suggest that agricultural production cooperatives have a role to play in agricultural development after all.