Green industrial policy and green development of agriculture-Quasi-natural experiment based on the Yangtze River Economic Belt in China

Based on the panel data of 30 provinces, municipalities, and autonomous regions in China from 2012 to 2022, from the perspective of harmony between man and nature, this paper selects 20 indicators to measure the level of agricultural green development from five dimensions such as ecological conservation and resource conservation by entropy weight method. On this basis, taking the implementation of green industrial policy in the Yangtze River Economic Belt as a quasi-natural experiment, the policy effect of green industrial policy on agricultural green development was analyzed by using the difference-in-difference method. The study found that: (1) the green development of agriculture is basically increasing year by year in each province, but there are some differences in the green development of agriculture among provinces; (2) Compared with the non-implementation areas of policies, the green development of agriculture in the implementation areas of policies has been significantly improved, and has passed a series of robustness tests; (3) The mechanism analysis shows that the green industrial policy has a crowding-out effect on industrial development, but significantly enhances the ecological construction and protection, thus promoting the green development of agriculture; (4) Heterogeneity analysis shows that the policy has a significant positive incentive effect on the upper and lower reaches of the Yangtze River Economic Belt, and the incentive effect on the middle reaches is not significant; (5) The impact of technological level on agricultural green development shows a positive U-shaped relationship. The improvement of education and information development levels also effectively promotes the green development of agriculture. This paper provides important empirical evidence and factual references for further promoting the green development of agriculture and the improvement of green industrial policies.