Application of high-tech key to modern agriculture

Editor's note: China has unveiled a plan to accelerate the modernization of agriculture during the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-30) period. People's Daily Overseas Edition spoke to experts, including Zhang Chengpeng, an associate researcher at the Chinese Academy of Macroeconomic Research, on the development of agricultural technology in China. Below are excerpts of the interviews. The views don't necessarily represent those of China Daily.

In 2025, the contribution rate of agricultural scientific and technological progress surpassed 64 percent. The new plan has set a target of increasing the rate to 67 percent by 2030. This goal is not a catch-up gain from a low base, but an ambitious advance from an already high level.

This growth does not follow a linear trajectory. When the contribution rate was around 50 or 60 percent, the widespread adoption of individual technologies could generate noticeable gains. At the current level of more than 64 percent, however, the room for further improvement through the diffusion of a single technology has narrowed considerably.

Increasing the contribution rate by another 3 percentage points will require the coordinated application of multiple innovations, including biobreeding, digital and intelligent technologies, smart agricultural equipment and green production methods.

China's agricultural machinery industry faces structural challenges. It is not sufficiently competitive and lacks high-end products, while mechanization in hilly and mountainous areas continues to lag behind.

At the same time, greater efforts should be made to build a stronger industrial ecosystem, fostering leading enterprises, expanding remote operation and maintenance services, promoting shared-use machinery and improving equipment utilization. Policies on machinery purchase subsidies and operational subsidies should also be refined, while further expanding openness and international cooperation.

The country's agricultural biomanufacturing industry is at a pivotal stage where strategic opportunities coexist with practical challenges. To overcome existing bottlenecks, China should establish a scientific classification system for the sector, build a comprehensive national innovation framework for agricultural biomanufacturing, accelerate the development of an industry-university-research ecosystem led by enterprises, and formulate coordinated plans for differentiated industrial development.

AI holds enormous potential for agriculture, but many obstacles remain before AI and smart equipment can be widely deployed in the field. General-purpose algorithms often struggle to adapt to different climates, regions and crop varieties. Affordable, lightweight intelligent equipment remains in short supply, while agricultural data are difficult to collect and lack unified standards.

As a result, many AI applications remain confined to demonstration zones and pilot farms. China should strengthen agricultural and rural data infrastructure, build large-scale, multimodal, high-quality datasets, improve data standards and governance, accelerate the development of software and hardware with independent intellectual property rights, and encourage all stakeholders to speed up the digital and intelligent transformation of agriculture.

Emerging agricultural industries are the new engines of growth, while future-oriented industries represent the strategic frontier that China must secure in its quest to become a leading agricultural nation. Together, they form the technological foundation for building a strong agricultural sector.

Greater efforts should therefore be devoted to expanding emerging industries such as smart agriculture and the resource utilization of agricultural waste, while actively fostering future industries including molecular agriculture, gene-editing breeding technologies, agricultural foundation models and AI-powered decision-support systems. These measures will inject fresh momentum into high-quality agricultural development.

China has largely solved the challenge of ensuring an adequate food supply and is now shifting its focus toward improving quality, competitiveness and resilience. As the returns from traditional factor-driven growth continue to diminish, new industries and new business models will be essential for creating fresh sources of growth.

Accelerating the layout of emerging and future-oriented agricultural industries will accelerate agricultural and rural modernization, further strengthen the foundations of agriculture and address the remaining weak links in rural development.