Small-scale food producers worldwide contribute to around 80% of the world’s food, which is the cornerstone of food security and human development and, thus, deserves further reinforcement. However, small-scale farming faces many challenges. For example, the rural labor shortage, driven by declining fertility, rising agricultural wages, and rural-to-urban migration, has seriously challenged food production.

Agricultural mechanization is a crucial input for agri-food production because it can substitute human physical power and improve farm performance. Without mechanization, farmers would struggle to emerge from subsistence production. Thus, there is a great need to promote agricultural mechanization level to boost sustainable agricultural development. Prior evidence has revealed that agricultural mechanization increases farm productivity and efficiency and facilitates rural non-farm employment. In addition to economic impacts, agricultural mechanization may also generate other impacts. Mechanization has detrimental effects on the environmental sustainability of farming (e.g., soil compaction, greenhouse gas emissions, and chemical pollution). However, the social and environmental impacts of agricultural mechanization have been largely neglected in the literature.

The conference presented and discussed original, unpublished papers that enrich our understanding of the current status of mechanization development in small-scale farming systems and the impacts of adopting mechanization. It also provided insights for policy makers to design appropriate policy instruments to develop effective programs that support the development and adoption of scale- and topography-appropriate farm machines and enhance the farm sector’s resilience and sustainability.