In recent years, core agricultural enterprises within China’s agri-food supply chains have invested heavily in IT applications, yet there has been a problem of IT investment not being proportional to output. Therefore, from the perspective of IT capabilities,the theoretical and empirical research were combined to deeply investigate how IT capabilities influenced agri-food supply chain performance and the mediating roles of partnerships and information sharing. Totally 350 valid questionnaires were collected through online and offline surveys and structural equation modeling was used to find that: firstly, IT capabilities were positively correlated with both partnerships and information sharing; secondly, both partnerships and information sharing positively influenced the overall agri-food supply chain performance; thirdly, IT capabilities indirectly affected agri-food supply chain performance, with both partnerships and information sharing acting as complete mediators. It innovatively built and empirically tested the influence mechanism among IT capabilities, partnerships, information sharing, and agri-food supply chain performance. The findings can provide agricultural enterprise managers with effective strategies (such as enhancing IT capabilities, partnerships, and information sharing) to improve agri-food supply chain performance. Furthermore, it offerred valuable reference and insights for the continuous improvement of China’s agri-food industry chain development policies.