Reducing pesticide use is an inevitable requirement for consolidating the foundation of food security and accelerating the green development of agriculture. Based on the practical background of China’s agricultural green transformation and the rapid development of digital economy, this paper discusses and analyzes the impact of farmers’ digital literacy on their chemical pesticide reduction use. Using the data from China’s household and finance survey to construct a digital literacy index and analyses the impact of digital literacy on farmers’ pesticide reduction. The findings demonstrate that increasing farmers’ digital literacy significantly promotes pesticide reduction, even when endogeneity issues are taken into account using instrumental variables. And exploring the internal mechanisms of this effect from three crucial pesticide application components: pesticide applicator, spraying equipment and spraying techniques, we find that increasing digital literacy will help farmers to establish the idea of environmentally friendly production, choose cost-effective spraying machines, and be knowledgeable about scientific spraying techniques. Heterogeneity analysis reveals that among small-scale farmers, those who are not transferring into land, and those whose villages do not have agricultural professional managers, the improvement of digital literacy has more marginal impact on the reduction of pesticide use. The contribution of the article is to show how digital technology interventions affect farmers’ behavior in making production decisions and to highlight the significance of farmers’ digital literacy in making pesticide use decisions. The research findings of this paper present micro-foundation and ideas for improving green agricultural development and food security under the background of promoting agricultural and rural modernization and speeding up the rural revitalization strategy.