The impact of environmental uncertainty on agricultural green productivity: evidence from China's listed agricultural firms

Achieving sustainable agricultural development requires comprehensive environmental and economic strategies. Existing literature largely ignores how external volatility affects agricultural sustainability metrics. A research gap remains regarding environmental uncertainty in the agricultural sector. This study provides novel insights by linking uncertainty directly to green productivity. Using panel data from Chinese A-share listed agricultural firms between 2007 and 2023, we apply fixed-effects models to identify the effect of EU on AGTFP. The results show that higher levels of environmental uncertainty are consistently associated with lower AGTFP. There are two main mechanisms underlying this adverse effect. Environmental uncertainty leads to a decline in AGTFP by reducing green innovation and weakening the efficiency of investment and labor allocation. Under uncertainty, larger firms and state-owned enterprises experience greater productivity losses, whereas firms with a higher degree of vertical integration exhibit comparatively smaller productivity losses. Low-productivity firms are more vulnerable to uncertainty shocks, with the effect diminishing at higher productivity levels. Sectoral analysis further reveals that fishery and livestock enterprises are particularly sensitive. These findings highlight the need to mitigate uncertainty as part of broader efforts to support sustainable growth in agriculture.