By Ye Xingqing, Former Director and Researcher of the Rural Economy Research Department, Development Research Center of the State Council
The "15th Five-Year Plan" period (2026–2030) is a critical window for achieving the phased goals of basically realizing agricultural modernization and ensuring that rural areas are equipped with modern living conditions by 2035. To achieve these agricultural modernization goals, significant conceptual and articulative breakthroughs are needed during this period.
The "Modern Mega-Industry" concept encompasses four dimensions. First, we must adopt a broad vision of agriculture and a comprehensive approach to food, promoting the coordinated development of grain, cash crops, and feed, the integration of farming, forestry, animal husbandry, and fisheries, and the combination of planting, breeding, processing, and the deep integration of primary, secondary, and tertiary industries. This will accelerate the construction of a modern rural industrial system.
Second, we must focus on value-added processing at every stage — from grain to food, livestock to meat products, and agricultural goods to industrial products — extending industrial chains, raising value chains, and measuring progress by the overall increase in the added value of agriculture and related industries.
Third, we need to accelerate the development of a modern agricultural industrial system, production system, and management system, making modern agriculture a foundational sector that provides crucial support for the national economy.
Fourth, we must carefully calibrate the transfer, concentration, and scale of land operation rights, ensuring they align with the pace of urbanization, the transfer of the rural workforce, progress in agricultural science and technology, and the level of socialized services.
During the "15th Five-Year Plan" period, we must prioritize farmland protection and quality improvement. At the same time, China's farmland quality remains generally low, irrigation conditions are insufficient, and ecological constraints are tightening. We must therefore make simultaneous efforts in three integrated areas: quantity, quality, and ecology.
We must develop new quality productive forces (i.e., advanced productivity) suited to local conditions in agriculture.
On one hand, focusing on ensuring a stable and sufficient supply of grain and other important agricultural products, we need to upgrade traditional planting and breeding industries, raising land output rates, resource utilization rates, and labor productivity. On the other hand, we must actively expand new frontiers for agricultural development. Leveraging new materials, engineering technologies, and synthetic biology, we can accelerate the development of new models such as deep-sea and distant-water aquaculture, three-dimensional planting and breeding, and plant factories, while proactively planning for strategic emerging industries and future industries in the agricultural sector.
We must properly balance the relationships between yield and production capacity, production and ecology, and increased output and increased income.
While ensuring annual yield targets are met, greater emphasis should be placed on continuously strengthening production capacity. Reasonable fluctuations in annual yields should be tolerated, but capacity building must be reinforced, not weakened. We need to expand high-quality agricultural capacity to create conditions for the orderly phase-out of unhealthy and unsustainable marginal capacity, strengthening comprehensive production capacity while solidifying the foundation for green agricultural development. We must also place greater emphasis on increasing farmers' incomes, enhancing their intrinsic motivation to develop agriculture through rising earnings from farming, and ensuring that the benefits of agricultural modernization are shared more broadly and equitably among farmers.
We must systematically promote the coordinated development of the "Four Types of Agriculture."
First, Technology-driven agriculture. We need to organize major scientific and technological initiatives focused on core critical technologies, fully motivating researchers, research institutions, and agri-tech enterprises.
Second, Green agriculture. We must increase both the "green content" of agricultural development and the "green content" of agricultural products, while exploring mechanisms to realize the value of agricultural ecological products.
Third, Quality agriculture. We should focus on improving per-unit yields, water-saving irrigation, integrated water and fertilizer management, and full-process mechanization to enhance agricultural quality and efficiency, while also comprehensively improving the intrinsic quality of agricultural products.
Fourth, Brand agriculture. We shall coordinate efforts in variety improvement, quality enhancement, brand building, and standardized production, using branding to guide resource allocation, expand agricultural product consumption, promote supply-demand alignment, and strengthen overall agricultural competitiveness.
Published on February 26, 2026