from whac-a-mole fixes to systemic modernisation, PRC agriculture embraces ‘new quality productive forces’, integrated ‘three tasks’ governance, and enduring rural support
The Two Sessions amplified the agricultural message delivered in the 2026 No. 1 Document. Five years of short-term fixes—ag policy ‘whac-a-mole’—will now transition to a more systematic forward-looking vision. This new cycle, like much in the upcoming 5-year plan, is to be underpinned by ‘new quality productive forces’. For agriculture, this means AI, drones, and biomanufacturing are set to become core tools.
Policies centred on ‘tackling three tasks together’ and ‘fitting in with population change’ signal that rural governance can no longer be managed through isolated interventions. The next phase requires coordinated action across production, land, income, and demographic pressures at once.
what’s new in the No. 1 Central Document
Our earlier brief on the 2026 No. 1 Document discussed how the text now elevates the ‘Big Food’ concept from broad aim to core daily operations. In other notable policy moves, the 2026 text references sannong 三农 (three rurals: agriculture, rural areas, and farmers) principles of the early 2000s. These are now framed as together advancing
yield and capacity
production and ecology
output and income
By framing these objectives within a unified approach, Beijing seeks to move towards ‘modernising’ rural work and away from the pattern in which agencies responded to emergencies largely within their own silos.
Four main themes emerge from the latest No 1 Document.
new ways of working: ‘tackling three tasks together’ replaces single goals
Policy in 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025 aimed to raise output. This risked pumping too much groundwater and contaminating from excessive fertiliser. Yet protecting land reduced output, leading to continuing tension between grain security and raising farm incomes.
Bringing policy full circle to the tenets of sannong, planners will not focus solely on grain output over the next five years. They are expected to consider whether capacity is adequate, land is healthy, and farmers have better incomes. This brings the three goals into a single frame and reduces the tendency for agencies to mind only their own patch.
new time frames: ‘normalising targeted aid‘ (常态化帮扶) moves to the fore
The five-year transition of the 14th plan (2021–25), which provided special, temporary support to lift people out of poverty (a policy described as ‘put them on the horse and see them off’), has formally ended.
The 2026 document signals this shift by introducing ‘normalised targeted aid’. This means
the transition is over: targeted aid is no longer a short-term fix
it is now permanent: rural subsidies are to be folded into the broader revitalisation drive and become a permanent fixture of rural policy
Support must now look beyond just the old poor, argues Jiang Changyun 姜长云 National Development and Reform Commission. Risks are everywhere. A middle-income farm family could fall below the poverty line because of a serious illness or extreme weather. ‘Normalising’ does not mean ‘doing less’. It means building structures to monitor and support all rural people. This turns the fight into a ‘long-term war‘, notes Southern Daily. It relies on daily checking and steady financial support to hold the line. Beijing wants to keep central support funds steady to avoid the need to suddenly curtail programs.
new drivers: ‘new quality productive forces’ move from ideas to the field
The 2025 document first spoke of ‘developing new quality productive forces based on local needs’. At that stage, it was largely a call to set a new course. The 2026 document gives it substance. It calls for high-end smart farm tools and more use of drones, IoT (Internet of Things), and robots. It also wants to speed up bio-manufacturing.
But research does not always translate into actual use, and small farmers find it hard to participate. The 2026 document indicates special subsidies and roll-outs will follow. The document links reform in research, farm tech, and schooling to fix the whole chain, notes Zhang Zhaoxin 张照新 Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
new income logic: ‘consumption’ joins the loop
In the past, farmers made money in three ways: developing rural industry, wage labour, and subsidies. If incomes rise but there are no services or other consumption on which to spend money, more pay does not lead to a better life.
The 2026 document suggests ‘lifting rural consumption’ and building new outlets like farmer’s markets, craft shops, and camping. Zhang Zhaoxin and others believe this closes the loop between income, spending, and industry. More income leads to more spending, which helps local services and creates more jobs. A case in Kaiping shows this: old granaries turned into bookshops and old buildings into guest quarters, giving farmers new income streams.
what the Two Sessions added
The Two Sessions clarified several parts of the No 1 Document. In particular, they added firmer benchmarks, sharper delivery tools, and a broader set of risk-management instruments.
firmer grain benchmarks: from target-setting to stress-testing
The No. 1 Document set grain output at around 700 million tonnes. The Government Work Report then reiterated this as a core 2026 goal, lending the target greater political weight. Han Jun 韩俊 said at the Ministers’ Corridor on 9 March that grain output had reached 715 million tonnes in 2025, the second straight year above the 700 million mark. The signal is that Beijing is no longer treating grain stability as a one-off achievement. It is now presenting it as an expected deliverable, no matter what the pressure.
The same logic appeared in the new round of work to raise grain production capacity. Han Jun framed this around ‘good farmland, good seeds, good machinery and good methods’, while Qian Qian 钱前, a rice scientist and CAS academician, pointed to the technical route for raising yields in rice through better seedling systems, transplanting, irrigation, fertiliser placement, and pest control. The emphasis is now less on expanding sown area and more on improving the existing production system.
seed and land: from basic security to stronger foundations
The Two Sessions also added more detail on two of the system’s foundations: seeds and farmland. On seeds, Huang Sanwen 黄三文, head of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, said domestically bred varieties now account for 91 percent of vegetables, 80 percent of livestock and poultry, and 86 percent of aquatic products. This suggests the policy question is shifting. The issue is no longer simply whether China has domestic substitutes, but whether it can produce stronger varieties through boosting innovation capacity.
On land, Cao Weixing 曹维星 CPPCC Standing Committee member and agriculture policy expert, argued that farmland protection should cover quantity, quality, and ecology. This pushes the debate beyond the familiar red line language. The implication is that protecting acreage alone is no longer enough. More policy action is likely to focus on soil quality, black soil protection, saline-alkali land treatment, and the restoration of degraded land.
delivery, not just invention: pushing technology into farm use
The No. 1 Document had already stressed the ‘last kilometre’ problem in agricultural technology. The Two Sessions gave this more practical shape. Huang Sanwen said technology now contributes more than 64 percent to agricultural growth, while mechanisation in crop farming has reached nearly 80 percent. Han Jun said China had more than 300,000 agricultural drones in use in 2025, covering 460 million mu of farmland. Nie Shoujun 聂守军 Heilongjiang Academy of Agricultural Sciences, called for more data-driven breeding and greater use of digital platforms.
Together, these signals suggest the bottleneck is moving. The question is no longer whether the PRC has enough pilot technologies. It is whether those tools can be deployed more widely, linked to real farm needs, and made affordable and useful for ordinary producers.
machinery support is becoming more targeted
The same applies to farm machinery. Han Jun pointed to smart harvesting robots, irrigation robots, and AI laser weeders already entering agricultural use. Nie Shoujun also called for more support for high-end combine harvesters and smart transplanters, alongside quicker replacement of obsolete equipment. This suggests machinery policy is moving beyond broad equipment support towards more selective backing for higher-performance tools.
food security is widening beyond grain alone
The Two Sessions also reinforced the No. 1 Doc’s push for a more diversified food supply system. Han Jun pointed to strong domestic output in meat, eggs, dairy, aquatic products, fruit, and vegetables. This is less a claim of full self-sufficiency than a sign that Beijing is framing food security more broadly, beyond grain alone, under the ‘big agriculture, big food’ approach.
a broader governance toolkit is taking shape
Finally, the Two Sessions noted two agricultural policy tools that help explain how this next phase may be managed. The first is the fourth national agricultural census, which will use 31 December 2026 as its reference date and cover not only grain and farmland, but also technology uptake, diversified food supply, and other structural changes in the rural economy. The second is agricultural insurance. In 2025, premiums reached RMB 155.55 billion, providing RMB 5.32 trillion in risk coverage. Policy support is moving further towards full-cost insurance and planting income insurance for major crops.
Both point in the same direction. Beijing is not relying only on targets and mobilisation. It is also building a more regular policy toolkit based on better data, earlier risk identification, and stronger ex ante protection.
shifts in recent Central No. 1 Docs (2023–26)
The graphic below illustrates policy weight across recent No. 1 documents. Scores are based on three factors: where the theme appears in the document, whether it has a dedicated section, and how densely it is supported by concrete measures. Higher scores indicate greater policy weight.
changing priorities: No. 1 Docs 2023–26
This policy transition underscores the evolution in agricultural and rural priorities.
Grain focus is no longer on annual output volumes and stable land area but on building sustainable capacity, quality, and resilience—balancing production with ecology and farmer income to sustain long-term land productivity (e.g., targeting ~700 million tons while advancing per-unit yields).
PRC grain supply and demand (2000–24)
Farmer incomes have graduated from direct top-down support (tax cuts since 2004, grain floor prices around 2009) to market-driven growth, with 2026 highlighting county-level industries, tech/green/quality/brand farming, tourism, e-commerce, processing, and diversified earnings beyond state aid alone.
Rural construction has transitioned from broad infrastructure upgrades to targeted, adaptive planning—fitting layouts to population decline, land functions, and disaster risks, prioritising viable villages and avoiding waste in depopulated areas.
This reflects a broader push toward high-quality, sustainable, and market-oriented rural modernisation.
what to watch
The end of the ‘five-year transition’ will test county budgets. As support shifts from households and resettlement to industrial and county-level programs, the question is whether counties can manage the transition without households that were supported in the past falling through the cracks.
Cross-provincial grain compensation is rising up the agenda. The idea goes beyond fiscal transfers and may also cover industry shifts and land-right swaps between grain-rich and grain-poor provinces. Its appearance in 2026 provincial budgets would show that Beijing is starting to act.
Counties are now a main focus for new policy. The No. 1 Document calls for more spending on cold-chain logistics, rural e-commerce, and related areas. But the main issue is who benefits. Smallholders may still lose out if returns flow to traders and platform firms. Lin Yuchan 林玉婵 South China University of Technology, warns that weak use of outsourced services and contract buying may deter private capital. That is a deeper problem than county planning can solve.
ag policy veterans
Wei Houkai 魏后凯 | CAAS Rural Development Institute director Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences
Sustainable agricultural modernisation demands a shift in worldview, says Wei. The old model—resource-intensive, land-constrained, and isolated from broader economic systems—is no longer viable.
Wei promotes the ‘big agriculture’ vision that integrates forests, grasslands, water systems, and urban spaces into a multifunctional, resilient agri-industrial system. Agriculture is reframed not just as production but as a provider of food, ecology, culture, and services, and is anchored in systems thinking and regional adaptation.
In this model, green change goes hand in hand with structural reform—bringing land use, tech, and supply chains into line across zones and scales. The challenge is to build up the systems that link smallholders, the foundation of rural communities, together.
A strong advocate for rural revitalisation, Wei has been vocal about the importance of bridging the digital divide between urban and rural areas, advocating for increased investment in rural IT infrastructure, and promoting the development of smart villages. He emphasises the need to integrate smart ag, smart tourism, and rural e-commerce to drive economic growth and improve the livelihoods of rural residents.
Wei is a prominent figure in PRC rural development policy circles. He has served as Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Rural Development Institute director since 2015 and is a distinguished professor.
His work focuses on rural development, regional economics, and urban-rural integration. Wei has specific interests in urbanisation, agricultural and rural development, rural revitalisation, regional economic theory and policy, enterprise relocation, foreign direct investment location, and industrial clusters.
Cheng Guoqiang 程国强 | Renmin University professor and National Food Strategy Institute director
Indirect subsidies promise to promote sustainability and efficiency, yet it is imperative to ensure that small-scale farmers are not left behind, cautions Cheng. Limited information about new subsidy programs, their eligibility criteria, or application procedures places smallholders at greater disadvantage than larger, better-resourced farmers. Smallholders often lack the finances, technical expertise, or managerial capacity to make effective use of indirect subsidies. The benefits from these programs to smallholders are limited, and ag sector inequalities may worsen.
Cheng argues that clear and accessible information must be disseminated in formats easy for smallholders to assimilate. While offering training and extension services for skill and know-how development, further financial support should be provided where necessary to ensure that smallholders take part. Inclusive policy design and targeted support measures are vital to ensuring an equitable transition that benefits all stakeholders.
In addition to his vice-director role at the China Grain Economy Association, an organisation of scholars working on socialist economic models of food security provision, Cheng is a professor at Tongji University and a regular contributor to China Economic Times and Farmers Daily. A long career working on agricultural trade and WTO issues at State Council Development Research Centre (DRC) culminated in the position of DRC director general. He continues to hold a special affiliation there.
Wu Hongyao 吴宏耀 | Central Rural Work Leading Group Office deputy director MARA (Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs) Party leadership group member
Food supplies and farmers’ income are eternal themes for rural work. Growth will depend on new ag operators incorporating small farmers into their operations, says Wu. For those agreeing to leave the land, smoother transfer protocols are needed to enable moderate-scale modern farms. Service and production outsourcing are solutions for those remaining on the land, ensuring efficient and mechanised operation. The No.1 Document lists ways to activate idle rural assets, such as leasing, providing service and equity participation with assets to increase collective incomes.
Wu has worked at the Central Rural Work Leading Group Office since 2007. He was appointed Central Rural Work Leading Group Office deputy director in 2017 and MARA (Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs) Party leadership group member in 2018. He is an active participant in drafting the No.1 Documents and speeches for high-level leaders and is also an active policy commentator in the mainstream media.