Agricultural industrial integration, as a key component of the rural revitalization strategy, plays a crucial role in driving rural economic growth. The mechanisms and pathways through which it contributes to rural development are currently a major focus of rural development research. This paper examines the impact of agricultural industrial integration on rural economic growth, summarizes its underlying mechanisms and pathways, and constructs a research framework. Using the development status of 20 prefecture-level cities in Province K from 2016 to 2024 as the research sample, the paper employs the entropy weight method to establish an agricultural industrial integration indicator system, summarizing the status of agricultural industrial integration and rural economic growth. With agricultural industrial integration level as the independent variable and rural economic growth as the dependent variable, a regression model is established for empirical analysis. In addition to the coefficient for the level of agricultural industrial integration being consistently significantly positive at the 1% statistical level, in the more developed northern regions, the regression coefficient for the integration of agriculture and services on rural economic growth reached 0.738. Therefore, rural economic development planning should clearly identify the integration of agriculture and tourism as the primary but not the only pathway, while also taking into account regional characteristics and adapting strategies accordingly.
