China publishes guidelines and action plan for smart agriculture
Food security has always been the top priority for China. Smart farming is seen as a key to solve various challenges related to this topic: the reduction of arable land due to urbanization, water resource shortages, climate and environmental issues, aging of agricultural workforce, etc.. On October 25, 2024, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs (MARA) of China published the 'National Smart Agriculture Action Plan 2024-2028', building on the 'Guidelines on Vigorously Developing Smart Agriculture'. The highlights of these two documents are outlined below.
Highlights of the guidelines on vigorously developing smart agriculture
- Promoting smart agriculture in key areas such as crop cultivation, greenhouse horticulture, livestock farming, fishery production, seed breeding, the entire agricultural supply chain, and agricultural and rural management services.
- Accelerating technological innovation and adoption of technology and carrying out pilot programs, by establishing leading smart agriculture zones, and strengthening technical promotion systems. The leading smart agriculture zones are dedicated regions supported by tailored policies, innovative mechanisms and allocated resources for trial and error, particularly in Zhejiang province before roll out in the rest of China.
- Further stimulating development of the smart agriculture industry, by standardization, big data and talent programs.
The action plan offers a clear timeline and targets
On October 25 2024, the Action Plan was released, focusing on eight key tasks and three major initiatives to be fully implemented from 2024 to 2028. The three major initiatives cover enhancing public service capacity, expanding smart agriculture applications, and promoting best practices.
The action plan focuses on building a robust national agricultural and rural big data platform. By 2028, the aim is to establish comprehensive data classification standards, a shared data catalogue, and a unified coding of agricultural resources and products. This will also support informed decision-making and policy formulation.
The application of smart agriculture technology in key areas, such as crop cultivation, greenhouse horticulture, animal husbandry, fishery and the seed industry, are outlined in the action plan. China has demonstrated a strong commitment to investing heavily in bringing these critical technologies from the laboratory into real-world agricultural practices:
- Enable the large-area yield increase of major arable crops, through: implementing digital planting technology solutions, operating water and fertilizer integrated smart management systems, upgrading digitalization of agricultural machinery and equipment, guiding the equipment terminals equipped with systems such as Beidou navigation satellite system assisted driving, improving the level of precision operations, implementing monitoring and early warning networks for field meteorology, crop growth, soil moisture, pests and diseases, and form an integrated monitoring system covering the entire region, establishing and improving smart agricultural services and provide various information services such as agricultural guidance, market information, disaster prevention and mitigation throughout the entire production cycle for small farmers and other operating entities.
- Establishing a number of smart farms (greenhouse horticulture, animal husbandry and fishery):
- Smart greenhouse horticulture focuses on the application of environmental monitoring and control, precise management of water, fertilizers and chemicals, intelligent plant protection, unmanned inspection and transportation, intelligent agricultural machinery and other technical equipment.
- Smart animal husbandry focuses on the application of technical equipment such as individual physical signs monitoring and management, precise environmental regulation, automatic inspection and disinfecting, intelligent disease diagnosis, precise formula feeding, automatic collection and cleaning, and harmless treatment of waste.
- Smart fishery focuses on the application of technical equipment such as environmental and water quality monitoring, automatic oxygenation, intelligent inspection, intelligent feeding, individual behavior observation, intelligent diagnosis of fish diseases, and graded counting.
- Promoting the intelligent development of breeding:
- Accelerating the digitalization establishment of national and provincial crop germplasm banks, livestock and poultry gene banks, and resource conservation facilities for livestock, poultry, and aquatic species, it includes sharing of germplasm resource information.
- Establishing a number of smart and modern crop seed production zones and core breeding farms for livestock and poultry.
- Encouraging research institutions and seed enterprises to collaborate in building intelligent breeding platforms and developing tools for smart breeding design, shifting from experience-based breeding to intelligent design-driven breeding to effectively shorten breeding cycles.
- Sharing of experimental data from genetic evaluation centers and livestock and poultry performance testing stations, and improving the efficiency of variety testing and evaluation.
- Establishing and improving the Chinese Seed Industry Big Data Platform, setting up a variety identification system and implementing a seed traceability management system.
New opportunities for Dutch agribusinesses
In recent years, Chinese companies are developing rapidly in areas such as greenhouse technology, machinery automation, and agricultural AI, potentially reducing reliance on foreign technology providers.
These technologies are closely aligned with the development of smart agriculture in the Netherlands, a global leader in agricultural innovation. As China adopts these innovations, it will open up new opportunities for Dutch agribusinesses to expand and explore the Chinese market, bearing in mind that increased localization efforts and domestic investment in smart agriculture technologies may intensify competition.
More information
For more information, you can reach out to the Netherlands Agricultural Network team in China (PEK-LVVN@minbuza.nl).