Smart Agriculture, Core of New Agricultural Productivity, Gets Boost in China

The 2026 Government Work Report clearly puts forward adhering to innovation-driven development and fostering new productive forces, pointing out the direction for the development of agricultural modernization. A member of the Standing Committee of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) stated that smart agriculture, as a core representative of new agricultural productive forces, is an inevitable trend for the future development of agriculture and an important support for building a strong agricultural country at a high level.

At present, with the accelerated advancement of high-standard farmland construction and appropriate-scale operation, initial achievements have been made in the development of smart agriculture in China. However, the sector still faces prominent challenges, including a weak innovation system, insufficient integration of agriculture-related big data, a shortage of professional talents and poor inter-departmental collaboration, which restrict its effectiveness in empowering the high-quality development of agriculture.

To address these issues, targeted measures have been proposed. Firstly, strengthen the innovation of key technological equipment, layout major collaborative research tasks, and build interdisciplinary and cross-field smart agriculture research platforms to lead innovative development. Secondly, promote the co-construction and sharing of agriculture-related big data at provincial, municipal and county levels, improve data standards and circulation mechanisms, and empower smart agriculture with data elements. Thirdly, enhance multi-level talent training, guide universities to add related majors, cultivate grass-roots talents through order-based training, and improve the intelligent literacy of practitioners.

In addition, improve the collaborative promotion mechanism, gather the joint efforts of multiple departments, set up innovation consortia, and promote full-chain innovation and application. Finally, increase policy support, establish special funds for scientific and technological innovation, improve the industrial technology system, provide comprehensive preferential policies for enterprises, and optimize talent incentives and guarantees.

These measures are expected to effectively solve the current bottlenecks in the development of smart agriculture, promote its in-depth integration with agricultural production, and further release the vitality of new agricultural productive forces, laying a solid foundation for accelerating agricultural modernization and building a strong agricultural country.