Does the Creation of Food Safety Demonstration Cities Promote Agricultural Development? Evidence from China

The creation of food safety demonstration cities (CFSDC) is among the key measures the Chinese government implemented to address the intensifying food safety problem. While effectively managing food safety issues, whether this measure will have an impact on agricultural development in China remains unknown. In this paper, based on panel data from 277 cities in China from 2011 to 2019, the impact of the construction of food safety demonstration cities on agricultural development is empirically examined using the difference-in-differences (DID) model. The results show that the CFSDC significantly improves the level of agricultural development, which still holds after various robustness tests. Analysis of the underlying mechanism indicates that the CFSDC promotes urban agricultural development by accelerating both technological innovation and industrial restructuring. The results of heterogeneity analysis show that the policy effects of the CFSDC exhibit significant heterogeneous characteristics depending on city size, city location, and city administrative level. The findings contribute to the understanding of the relationship between policy pilot projects and agricultural development and provide empirical support for promoting the governance of food safety issues and agricultural development.