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Introduction Data is a key production factor in the information age and a fundamental resource for accelerating the modernization of agriculture. However, issues such as unclear ownership, difficulty in pricing, and imperfect trading mechanisms of data elements currently severely constrain their market-oriented allocation. Methods Based on evolutionary game theory and focusing on the specific context of China's transitional economy, this paper constructs an evolutionary game model from the perspective of data ownership under two agricultural data development modes: one led by agri-technology enterprises (ATEs) and the other by the government. The model simulates and analyzes the conditions and influencing factors to achieve the ideal state of these two modes and further compares their efficiency in utilizing agricultural data. Results and discussion The results show that under the ATEs-dominated mode, the probability of speculative behavior by ATEs and the price of agricultural data significantly affect farmers' utilization of data elements in cooperatives. In the government-led mode, the intensity of government regulation and the level of subsidies are the primary factors. Both the intensity of regulation and the level of subsidies should be maintained within a reasonable range. When the probability of speculative behavior by ATEs is high, the efficiency of the government-led mode is higher than that of the ATE-led mode. These findings suggest that policymakers should adopt a hybrid approach tailored to regional market maturity. Prioritizing government-led models is recommended in high-risk regions, while fostering Public-Private Partnership (PPP) frameworks is more suitable for mature markets to optimize the allocation of agricultural data elements.