China makes remarkable advancements in agricultural sector development in 2024

China has made remarkable advancements in the development of its agricultural sector in 2024, featuring government efforts to arouse the enthusiasm of farmers for production and application of modern agricultural technology.

Throughout the country, various regions have progressively broadened their modernization efforts, collaboratively enhancing technological and institutional innovations.

China's grain production in 2024 is expected to exceed 700 billion kilograms in annual output for the first time, achieving the "more than 650-billion kilogram" target set at the start of the year, and representing a decade of stable production at or above the 650-billion-kilogram mark.

"The reason why China's grain production has remained at a high level for an extended period and has achieved new leaps fundamentally lies in the thorough implementation of the strategy of land conservation and technological method application. We have ensured that the total acreage of farmland remains above the specified red line, and have safeguarded seed industry security. We have thus ensured local governments are motivated to keep a focus on grain production and farmers are motivated to grow grains, safeguarding food security across all sectors, processes and stages," said Tu Shengwei, researcher with the Macroeconomic Research Institute under the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) -- Chinas' top economic planner.

Behind the high-level increase in grain production are the continuous breakthroughs in agricultural technology.

The national inventory of agricultural machinery has topped 200 million units, with the deployment of terminal equipment using China's BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) exceeding 2.2 million units. The overall mechanization rate for crop planting, cultivation, and harvesting has risen to more than 74 percent, with cultivation of the three primary staple crops now largely mechanized. Underpinning the surge in grain production is the steady growth in the number of new agricultural business entities. To date, there are more than 2.2 million farmers' cooperatives and nearly 4 million family farms nationwide.

"There are 1.09 million socialized agricultural service entities across the country, serving an area of over 2.1 billion mu (about 140.07 million hectares) annually for more than 94 million smallholder farmers," said Han Yijun, chief of the Industry Economy Common Technology Innovation Team under the National Modern Agricultural Industry Technology System.

In addition to ensuring the safety and high-quality development of grain production, a broader agricultural modernization has also developed rapidly across China. In promoting the modernization of agriculture and rural areas, science and technology is the primary productive force, and reform is the fundamental driving force.

So far this year, China has continued to explore the development of an enduring mechanism for overseeing the quality of high-standard farmland, and innovate the approaches and tools of supervision.

"We also can observe the land through the space and also can use the UAV, and we combine with sensors on the ground. So we're monitoring the crop from the space, sky and ground," said Guo Tao, deputy general manager, PIESAT Information Technology Co., Ltd.

The development of modern agriculture is not just a change in the traditional primary industry. It entails integration of the primary, secondary and tertiary industries.

In the year, all regions across China have actively made efforts to foster new industries and business models in rural areas, transforming "local products" into "trendy goods."

In contemporary rural China, over 100 million parcels are dispatched and received daily, with express delivery services extending to more than 90 percent of administrative villages in the country. Nationwide, approximately 14.7 percent of villages, or half a million rural households, are involved in leisure agriculture and rural tourism, receiving over 3 billion tourist visits per year.

So far this year, the income generated by leisure agriculture has amounted to 840 billion yuan (115 billion U.S. dollars). A growing number of livable and thriving rural communities are becoming ideal homelands for farmers.

China makes remarkable advancements in agricultural sector development in 2024

A veteran agricultural scientist and deputy to the National People's Congress (NPC), China's national legislature, shared his decades-long mission to reduce the country's reliance on food imports and safeguard its food security by developing high-yield, disease-resistant wheat varieties.

Gao Derong, a researcher from the Lixiahe Regional Institute of Agricultural Sciences in east China's Jiangsu Province, detailed his relentless pursuit of better wheat varieties while taking a question at a press conference on the sidelines of the ongoing "two sessions", a major event in China's political calendar.

He has dedicated more than 30 years to wheat breeding and succeeded in the fight against Fusarium head blight, a serious fungal disease of cereals, including wheat and other small-grain crops, by implanting "disease-resistant genes" inside seeds.

"After 30 years of countless and repeated trials, we finally developed our first Fusarium head blight resistant variety in 2021. It exhibits strong disease resistance and high yield, with a yield of up to 600 kg per mu (0.066 hectare) in a demonstration plot. This means farmers can use fewer pesticides, produce more wheats, and secure a more stable harvest," said Gao.

Addressing the tight rotation schedule in the rice-wheat rotation system in south China, his team developed time-smart varieties like "Yangmai 25," which can be sown as late as December and still achieve a yield of 6,00 kg per mu.

"We have also cultivated a high-quality weak-gluten wheat variety tailored for biscuits and pastries, reversing China's long-standing reliance on imports. These grain varieties, like elite guard teams, help us hold our rice bowl firmly and contribute to securing our food security," Gao said.

As an NPC deputy, Gao extends his research from the lab to the field, gathering farmers' concerns alongside experimental data.

"My duty as a deputy is also written in the fields. 'Can we construct high-standard farmland at an accelerated pace?' 'Can we have more targeted agricultural subsidies?' These are the voices I often heard in the fields, which I carefully recorded like experimental data and transformed into suggestions," he said. Gao said he will continue working to enable the land to yield more grain, help farmers increase their incomes, and contribute to ensuring national food security.

This year's "two sessions," the annual meetings of China's top political advisory body and national legislature, opened in Beijing Wednesday and Thursday, respectively. As the world's second-largest economy embarks on the inaugural year of its 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-2030) period, these gatherings will serve both as a review of past achievements, and as a strategic compass guiding the nation's future development.

NPC deputy vows to fortify China's food security through seed innovation