<p>Food security is confronted with formidable challenges, while the digital economy has created a new breakthrough. Based on provincial panel data in China from 2010 to 2022, this study employs the GMM model which mitigates endogeneity issues to examine the impact of the digital economy on grain industry total factor productivity (TFP). Results indicate that both the current and lagged digital economy significantly enhance TFP in the grain industry. The effect of the lagged digital economy is more pronounced. Further analysis indicates that labor and urbanization mechanisms drive the positive effect, while population aging dampens it. This study also identifies a nonlinear impact of government attention on the nexus, which confirms the existence of a threshold effect. The findings reveal that the digital economy is a significant driver of grain industry TFP and provide theoretical support in determining policy implementation directions and intensity.</p>