Can Conservation Tillage Enhance Farmers’ Production Resilience? Evidence from China’s Black Soil Region

Black soil regions are among the world’s major grain-producing areas and are also key regions for the implementation of conservation tillage. However, whether and how conservation tillage is related to farmers’ production resilience remains insufficiently understood. To address this research gap, this study develops a multidimensional evaluation framework and quantifies farmers’ production resilience using an entropy-weighted composite index constructed from multiple indicators of absorptive, adaptive, and transformative capacities. Based on survey data from 492 farm households in the black soil region of Northeast China, we examine the relationship between conservation tillage adoption and farmers’ production resilience and explore the associated pathways. The baseline model estimates that conservation tillage adoption is associated with a 0.036-unit higher composite production resilience index on a 0–1 scale, with the estimated association statistically significant at the 1% level. This relationship is consistent with pathways involving improved soil production condition, higher farming income, and optimized labor allocation. The estimated association also varies significantly across age groups, technical-training status, and levels of land fragmentation. The results also reveal complementarity between no-tillage or minimum tillage and straw mulching: their combined adoption is associated with higher resilience than adopting either practice alone, particularly at partial or high residue-retention levels. These findings suggest that conservation tillage may contribute not only to soil conservation but also to farmers’ capacity to cope with external shocks in the black soil region of Northeast China. They also highlight the potential importance of promoting integrated conservation tillage technology packages and improving the intensity and quality of conservation tillage adoption in this region.