Driving the Development of Modern Agriculture with Scientific and Technological Innovation

At its third plenary session in July 2024, the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) proposed to develop institutions and mechanisms to support all-around innovation and unveiled a series of plans for deepening scientific and technological (S&T) structural reform. This is a reflection of the great importance the CPC Central Committee places on S&T innovation. To build a strong agricultural country and advance agricultural and rural modernization, we must focus heavily on S&T advances and rely closely on them to make progress.

I. The significance of driving agricultural development with S&T innovation

The history of agricultural S&T development both in China and around the world shows that innovation has always been the driving force behind agricultural development and that a strong agricultural nation must inevitably possess strong S&T capabilities. To drive the development of modern agriculture with S&T innovation is vital for ensuring national food security, promoting the high-quality development of agriculture and rural areas, and making faster strides in building a strong agricultural nation.

A fundamental solution for ensuring stable and growing grain output and firmly securing China’s food supply

History tells us that stability is contingent on agriculture and that chaos reigns in the absence of food. If we cannot control our food supply through our own efforts, our national development will suffer, and may even fall under the control of others. President Xi Jinping has repeatedly emphasized that “The Chinese people’s food supply must remain firmly in our own control at all times, and our food bowls should be primarily filled with Chinese grain.” We cannot rely on international markets to meet the food needs of more than 1.4 billion Chinese people. At the same time, however, the area of China’s arable land is very limited. As such, the fundamental solution for ensuring stable and growing grain production lies in technology. As consumer demands shift from having enough to eat to eating well and maintaining a healthy and nutritious diet, we must leverage our limited water and land resources to ensure that agricultural production is sufficient in quantity, high in quality, environmentally sustainable, economically efficient, and optimally structured. To achieve this, we must rely on the wings of technology to take us forward. We need to harness innovation to secure China’s food supply and carry out the food crop production strategy based on farmland management and application of technology. Only in this way can we properly satisfy people’s aspirations for a better life.

High-standard farmland in Shuifan Village, located in the Dabie Mountains, Yuexi County, Anhui Province, October 24, 2024. Since 2012, China has steadily ramped up S&T innovation and research for farmland management and employed a holistic, multi-pronged approach to enhancing soil productivity. PEOPLE’S DAILY / PHOTO BY WANG XIANGUO

A core driver of green and sustainable agricultural development

President Xi Jinping places great importance on ecological conservation in rural areas. He has stressed that efforts to improve the rural environment and promote green agricultural development must be in line with China’s overall plans for ecological advancement. At present, global issues such as climate change, water scarcity, and soil degradation are posing serious threats to agricultural sustainability. Technology is undoubtedly a key to solving the environmental and resource challenges confronting agriculture and rural areas. With precision agriculture technologies, for example, we can avoid excessive use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides by monitoring and managing farmland more accurately. We can also address the challenge of water scarcity by employing smart irrigation systems to optimize water resource allocation and improve irrigation efficiency. Emissions reduction and carbon sequestration in agriculture and rural areas are key measures with strong potential for promoting progress toward China’s goals of reaching peak carbon emissions by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060. Well-conceived assessments, feasible action plans, and robust measures will be needed in order to deliver on this front. Compared to developed countries with modernized agricultural sectors, China still faces formidable challenges in pursuing green agricultural development. This is why we need to guide the development of modern agriculture with S&T innovation. Giving full play to the critical role of technology in green development, we need to enhance environmental protection, boost agricultural production efficiency, and promote the circular use of agricultural resources. These efforts will help propel an all-around transformation to green agricultural development.

A powerful engine for the new undertaking of building a strong agricultural nation

Looking back at modern agricultural history, we can see that each technological revolution led to a huge jump in productivity by providing agriculture with the wings to surge ahead. In the first revolution, high-yielding crops native to Latin America, such as corn, sweet potatoes, and potatoes, were introduced to the Eurasian continent. The second revolution saw fossil fuels such as petroleum being used to manufacture fertilizers and pesticides and power agricultural machinery. In the third revolution, dwarf varieties of wheat and rice were widely adopted, and the full utilization of hybrid vigor was realized. Right now, a new agricultural revolution, defined by bio- and information technology, is on the brink of producing new breakthroughs, and all countries are vying to gain a strategic advantage. As a major agricultural nation, China cannot afford to fall behind. Leveraging S&T innovation as the driver and guide, we must move as fast as possible to achieve core breakthroughs in key fields, make a major push to develop strategic and disruptive technologies, enhance our systematic capacity to address major risks and challenges in agriculture, and move at a faster pace toward greater S&T self-reliance and strength. In doing so, we will lay down robust foundations for building a strong agricultural country.

Interior of the National Crop Genebank of China, November 27, 2024. China holds the second-largest collection of crop germplasm in the world, having collected and preserved nearly 560,000 resources by the end of 2023. CHINESE ACADEMY OF AGRICULTURAL SCIENCES

II. Remarkable achievements in agricultural S&T innovation in the new era

Since the 18th CPC National Congress in 2012, under the strong leadership of the CPC Central Committee with Xi Jinping at its core, China has ramped up the pace of agricultural S&T innovation and registered historic accomplishments. Major breakthroughs and leaps forward have been made in key sectors such as seeds, farmland, agricultural machinery and equipment, biosafety and biosecurity, and green and low-carbon development. The contribution of technological progress to agricultural output increased from 54.5% in 2012 to 63.2% in 2023, while the per capita share of grain grew from 450 kilograms in 2012 to 493 kilograms in 2023. These achievements have played a vital role in ensuring national food security, increasing farmers’ income, maintaining social stability, and promoting social development.

China has managed to catch up in breeding technologies and has moved into the lead in some respects

A single seed is like an agricultural “chip” that integrates multiple functions—increased yields, resistance to insects and disease, mechanical compatibility, and agronomic traits. As carriers of genetic information, germplasm resources are the cornerstone of innovations in breeding and strategic resources that all countries compete to collect and preserve. China holds the second-largest collection of crop germplasm in the world, having collected and preserved nearly 560,000 resources by the end of 2023. It has also established the world’s largest wild rice germplasm nursery in Sanya, Hainan, laying the foundation for maintaining its leading edge in both theoretical research and practical rice breeding. Led by Academician Yuan Longping and through collaborative research, Chinese scientists developed “three-line” and “two-line” hybrid rice systems, which increased yields by 20% and 29%, respectively, over conventional rice. In 2019, a team of Chinese scientists successfully developed the first apomixis system for hybrid rice, paving the way for large-scale utilization of distant heterosis (a “one-line” hybrid system) and low-cost hybrid seed preservation. In 2023, China developed super hybrid varieties of rice with a yield of more than 18 metric tons per hectare, setting a new world record for yield per unit area of hybrid rice in a single season.

Efforts to enhance both farmland management and the application of technology have led to steady improvements in overall soil productivity

Arable land is the lifeblood of food production. Food security is a matter of paramount national importance, and the redline for the total area of farmland must be strictly defended. This redline refers not only to the quantity of farmland but also to its quality. Since 2012, China has steadily ramped up S&T innovation and research for farmland management, ensuring steady improvements in overall soil fertility. Adopting an overarching, multi-pronged approach, we have carried out projects on high-quality farmland development, chernozem soil protection, and farmland soil pollution control and restoration. By 2022, China had developed a total of 66.67 million hectares of high-quality farmland, covering around 80% of the country’s grain production capacity. This has resulted in a 10-20% increase in grain yield per hectare and cost-efficiency gains of around 7,500 yuan per hectare. It has also effectively promoted agricultural mechanization, digitalization, standardization, and specialization, while enhancing the resilience of farmland to both drought and flooding.

Agriculture has become much more mechanized and intelligent, greatly improving overall farming efficiency

Since 2012, China has made great strides in upgrading agricultural machinery and equipment and mechanizing agricultural operations, with breakthroughs in the R&D of large, high-powered farming machinery and equipment. By 2023, the total mechanical power of machinery used in farming had reached 1.1 billion kilowatts, with the overall mechanization rate for crop farming exceeding 74%. The successful development of 300-horsepower tractors with continuously variable transmission, 580-horsepower forage harvesters, and large square balers has resolved China’s previous dependence on imported large intelligent agricultural machinery and broken the long-standing foreign monopoly on advanced farming equipment. By incorporating Beidou satellite navigation technology, agricultural machinery can operate autonomously and carry out precise field management. This has greatly enhanced the overall efficiency of farming.

Biosafety and biosecurity governance have been steadily enhanced, providing robust support for the consistent bumper harvests of recent years

Since 2012, China has achieved major advances in strengthening biosafety and biosecurity governance and in preventing and treating harm from invasive species. A migration monitoring network centered on high-resolution insect radar technology has been successfully developed for dealing with the fall armyworm—a destructive pest that affects a wide range of crops, but primarily corn. This system can accurately identify incoming populations from Southeast Asian countries in real-time and provide early-warning for prevention and control. As a result, the fall armyworm has been contained to areas south of the Yangtze River, thus effectively safeguarding China’s two major corn-producing regions—the summer corn region of the Yellow River-Huaihe River-Haihe River Plain and the northern spring corn region. This system has been a source of strong support for China’s bumper harvests. China also led the way in developing an effective bivalent H5/H7 inactivated avian influenza vaccine. Over 300 billion doses of the vaccine have been distributed and administered. This vaccine halted the spread of the H7N9 virus among poultry and eliminated the threat of human infection at its source. It also effectively mitigated the harm of the H5N1 and H5N8 avian influenza viruses that were ravaging poultry stocks and threatening human health worldwide. It has been exported to a number of Belt and Road partner countries, including Egypt, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Iran. Through such efforts, China has led the world in putting in place a system for preventing human disease through animal health monitoring and vaccination programs.

The development of eco-friendly, low-carbon agriculture has been stepped up, and our capacity to ensure the safety of agricultural products has been steadily enhanced

Green and low-carbon development is an international trend and reflects the general direction of progress. Indeed, the green economy has become a strategic high ground in global industrial competition. We must ensure that our agricultural sector is green and grounded in conservation by adopting eco-friendly and low-carbon agricultural practices. In recent years, China has made notable progress in improving yields while reducing fertilizer and pesticide use, thanks to a growing capacity to supply eco-friendly, low-carbon farming technologies. As part of the search for greener methods to both reduce pesticide use and effectively combat pests, Chinese scientists developed an integrated “anti-pest net” technology to essentially provide a protective screen for cowpea crops in Hainan Province. The system integrates multiple elements, including physical barriers, colored sticky traps, biological control, and the application of efficient, low-toxicity pesticides. With this technology, chemical pesticide use was 30% lower compared to open-field cowpea cultivation. Major pest populations were reduced by 70%, and crop yields rose by 20%. Moreover, despite the introduction of more stringent testing criteria, the crops cultivated under these methods maintained nearly 100% compliance with pesticide residue standards. The ultimate result of all this has been higher incomes for farmers and better food safety for consumers. In the area of aerial pest control operations, advanced drone technologies and intelligent control systems have been introduced. These systems scan crop leaves to collect data on plant quantity, density, height, and growth conditions. Based on this analysis, they then precisely spray pesticides onto crop leaves. This approach, which minimizes chemical use, has proved 60 times more efficient than traditional pest control methods.

Self-driving intelligent machinery operates in the fields of Wolonggang Village in Liubei Town, Hubei Province, October 28, 2024. This machinery, which is capable of data collection, real-time tracking, and trajectory queries, can perform intelligent operations such as plowing, harrowing, sowing, and harvesting. PEOPLE’S DAILY / PHOTO BY CAO ZHONGHONG

Innovations in agricultural technology are being applied at a faster pace, creating broader development opportunities for rural industries

Industrial revitalization has a central place on our rural revitalization agenda, and it is the starting point of our work in agriculture. We have harnessed S&T innovation to invigorate various resources and production factors in a bid to upgrade the entire rural industrial chain while also promoting continuous improvements in infrastructure and public service systems. For example, to leverage the abundant solar and thermal resources of the vast Gobi Desert in the northwestern region, we have developed a vegetable industry based on protected agriculture. This has involved the development and roll-out of easy-to-assemble, lightweight greenhouses that are wind- and pressure-resistant and adapted to desert conditions. Using solar capture and storage technology, these greenhouses store heat during the day and release it at night, raising internal night-time temperatures by 4–5°C while creating energy savings of 63–73.5%. Thanks to condensate technology for water vapor recovery and recycling, only 20 liters of water is needed to produce a kilogram of tomatoes, representing a 50% reduction in water consumption compared to open-field tomato cultivation. Today, arch-shaped greenhouses, solar greenhouses, and multi-span greenhouses are ubiquitous across the northwestern region, helping to support the year-round balanced supply of vegetables and other agricultural products. The greenhouse vegetable industry has become a “new oasis” in the Gobi Desert.

Since 2012, as agricultural S&T in China has surged forward, our country has entered the top tier of nations for agricultural innovation. China now either leads or ranks among the global leaders in such areas as crop genomics research, the utilization of strong heterosis in crops and the breeding of new varieties, the cultivation of Green Super Rice, and research on epidemiological mechanisms of major animal diseases and vaccine development. With the new revolution in bio- and information technology taking off, the cross-fusion of information technology, engineering technology, artificial intelligence, and biotechnology is leading to the rapid application of advancements in agriculture. This is spawning new industries, models of business, and growth drivers that are profoundly influencing and shaping the future landscape of global agriculture. We must be keenly aware of the weak links in the development of agricultural S&T in China. We need to ramp up agricultural S&T innovation, continue working to optimize the allocation of innovation resources and production factors, and promote the full implementation of policies aimed at guiding the development of modern agriculture with S&T innovation.

III. Striving to provide strong S&T support for modern agricultural development

At its third plenary session, the 20th CPC Central Committee rolled out systematic plans to deepen S&T structural reform, introducing major initiatives to stimulate S&T innovation. We must thoroughly implement the Central Committee’s decisions and plans, ensuring self-reliance and strength in agricultural S&T, giving greater priority to agricultural S&T development, and deepening agricultural S&T structural reform. We should strengthen the dual drivers of S&T advancement and institutional reform, optimize efforts to organize academic disciplines, nurture talent, enhance platforms, and allocate funds, and provide the strong S&T support needed to drive modern agricultural development.

Developing world-class agricultural disciplines with Chinese features that are well-aligned with S&T innovation needs

We need to focus on the global frontiers of agricultural disciplines and modern agricultural development needs and adapt to the rapid advancement of cutting-edge technologies such as information technology, artificial intelligence, and synthetic biology. To this end, we must establish a mechanism for creating and adjusting agriculture-related disciplines that is guided by S&T development and national strategic needs. We should make extraordinary moves to plan for disciplines and majors that are in urgent demand, taking steps to make them more forward-looking, adaptable, and targeted. Efforts should be redoubled to develop disciplines related to basic research, interdisciplinary frontiers, and key areas. In universities and research institutes with the right conditions, we should establish urgently needed majors in key areas such as food security, ecological advancement, smart agriculture, nutrition and health, and rural development. Additionally, we should make plans to develop majors in a group of emerging agriculture-related fields, such as green and low-carbon development, multi-functional agriculture, ecological restoration, forest-based wellness and care, wetland protection, and human living environment governance.

Improving guidance and training for agricultural S&T talent to ensure an ample supply of human resources for innovation

Human resources are the primary resource and the most vibrant and dynamic factor in innovation. To advance S&T innovation, we need to cultivate a large, well-structured team of high-quality innovative talent. In 2022, 87,700 personnel were employed in China’s agricultural research institutions, and a total of 489,800 agri-tech promotion workers were working at various levels of the agricultural sector. We must do more to enhance the team of agricultural S&T personnel in order to boost its stability and optimize its structure. The S&T talent systems for agriculture and rural areas also need to be refined. We should make a major push to train outstanding scientific research talent, launch a talent attraction scheme for agriculture and rural areas, with a focus on outstanding talent in frontier fields such as artificial intelligence and synthetic biology, and move faster to cultivate science strategists, first-class scientists, and innovation teams. We should implement the S&T specialist dispatch system, taking targeted steps to ensure that S&T personnel are well-matched to specific agricultural and rural needs and that talent chains are aligned with industrial chains, so as to fully tap the vitality of talent for agricultural and rural modernization. We need to give greater play to self-taught experts, veteran growers, rural makers, and high-caliber farmers in the innovation and application of agricultural S&T and strive to build a force of agricultural S&T innovators with a focus on agricultural universities and research institutes.

Developing agricultural research platforms and enhancing our capacity for S&T innovation

To accelerate agricultural S&T innovation, we need to enhance the overall effectiveness of the innovation system by leveraging S&T platforms, promote stronger coordination between the central and local levels, and strive to eliminate bottlenecks within the system. To boost China’s strength in strategic agricultural S&T, we should refine the system of national laboratories and better define the roles and layout of our national research institutions, advanced-level research universities, and leading high-tech enterprises. From a vertical standpoint, we need to clarify the core missions of agricultural research institutions at the central, provincial, and prefectural and city levels and leverage the advantages of different entities to create an integrated system built on seamless interconnection and strong complementarity. Horizontally speaking, we should specify the primary responsibilities and core business of agricultural universities, research institutes, and tech enterprises and define the roles of various innovation entities to enhance the overall efficiency of agricultural S&T innovation. With national laboratories taking the lead, we should bring together existing agricultural S&T innovation and application platforms concerning basic work, fundamental research, key technological innovations, and integration, so as to create a comprehensive and efficient system of platforms that will provide the foundational support needed to achieve greater self-reliance and strength in agricultural and rural S&T.

Encouraging dedication to science and tapping a powerful force for innovation

Given the long-term, foundational, and public-interest nature of agricultural research, it is essential to strengthen the CPC’s overall leadership over agricultural S&T work. We should leverage the guiding role of CPC organizations to effectively organize the scientific community and plan agricultural research work from a holistic perspective. We need to establish an agricultural S&T talent evaluation system focused on innovative capacity, quality, practical results, and contribution and refine the mechanisms for discovering, selecting, and cultivating young innovative talent, in order to tap the innovative drive and potential of agricultural S&T personnel. We must strengthen ethical standards and address academic misconduct, encourage agricultural S&T personnel to carry forward the exemplary traditions of many of the older generation of agricultural scientists like Yuan Longping, and ensure that research innovations are effectively applied to practical farming.

Wu Kongming is Member of the CPC Leadership Group of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, President of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, and Academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering.

(Originally appeared in Qiushi Journal, Chinese edition, No. 23, 2024)