China’s agricultural priorities in 2025

China's strategies for ensuring its agricultural self-sufficiency in 2025 will play a pivotal role not only for its domestic stability but also for global food dynamics. How

As global food security becomes an increasingly urgent issue, China’s strategies for ensuring its agricultural self-sufficiency in 2025 will play a pivotal role not only for its domestic stability but also for global food dynamics.How will China navigate this complex landscape given rising geopolitical tensions and shifting market dependencies? The answer will lie in how Beijing adapts its priorities to face both internal challenges and the changing global food order.

Since Xi Jinping’s administration took power, food security has been elevated as a national priority. Against the backdrop of an increasingly fragmented global environment, these concerns have grown more urgent, with China working to safeguard its long-term food supply amidst rising global instability.

Following the Central Rural Work Conference in December 2024, and ahead of the imminent release of this year’s No. 1 Policy Document—which is traditionally the guiding force for China’s rural, agricultural, and food policiestwo key priorities for the nation’s food security strategy for 2025 are beginning to take shape.

Key priorities

Maintaining grain production and security

Grain security remains key to China’s food security policy, highlighting the critical role of grain production in safeguarding the nation’s food future. With this in mind, grain production continues to be a cornerstone of China’s food security strategy. The 2024 Central Rural Work Conference reaffirmed the government’s commitment to boosting and stabilising domestic grain supply, with an emphasis on ensuring “absolute” stability in wheat and rice production. These two grains are seen as essential to China’s food security, providing the foundation for a self-sufficient agricultural framework.

These initiatives have, to some extent paid off. From 2003 to 2013, domestic grain production rose from 430 million metric tons to over 600 million metric tons, especially in key regions like the Yangtze River, Northeast China, and the North China Plains. Additionally, China has designated key areas for the production of staple crops like double-cropping rice and high-quality wheat in the Yangtze River Economic Belt.

More recently, the country’s grain production reached a record 706.5 million tonnes, reflecting a 1.6 percent increase from the previous year. At the same time, the national average yield per mu of grain reached 394.7 kilograms (kg), an increase of 5.1kg over the previous year. This is largely due to yield improvements contributing to more than 80 percent of the overall grain production increase.

A key part of the 2025 plan includes raising grain production by 55 million tonnes by 2030, which reflects a 7% increase over the previous year’s output. In line with these objectives, China’s current Five-Year Agricultural Plan targets annual grain production exceeding 770 million tonnes, alongside a push to increase domestic soybean production to 23 million tons by 2025. The plan also sets specific acreage targets, aiming to maintain over 1.75 billion mu (approximately 117 million hectares) of grain farmland.

While these achievements are commendable, China still faces challenges in scaling its grain production amidst a changing landscape due in part to demographic and environmental pressures remains a daunting task. These targets require massive investment and structural shifts. At present, it remains unclear whether China can meet them without overcoming significant hurdles, particularly in technology and infrastructure.

Agricultural innovation and technology

China is expected to continue encouraging efforts in agricultural innovation, particularly regarding the productivity of key grains and oilseeds (like rice, wheat, corn, soybeans, and rapeseed) to achieve national food production and related food security goals. To this end, Beijing has consistently emphasised the need for increased local production, evident in policy measures, targets, and five-year plans.

To meet its ambitious goals, China is heavily investing in agricultural innovation, particularly through biotechnology and digital technologies. This includes continued support for genetically modified (GM) crops, despite public opposition. While the inclusion of the commercialisation of GM crops into the country’s food security plans remain implicit.

Several moves suggest that it is heading in this direction. Most recently, in late 2024, China’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs (MARA) awarded safety certificates to 12 types of GM crops such as soybeans, corn, and cotton. These moves signal the government’s long-term push to integrate biotechnology into its food security strategy.

In parallel, significant investments are being made in research and development, particularly in hybrid seed technologies for crops like rice and wheat. This commitment to innovation is further evident in MARA’s 14th Five-Year Agricultural Plan (2021-2025) which, linked to the National Medium and Long-term Science and Technology Development Plan (2021-2035) and 14th Five-Year Plan for Promoting Agricultural and Rural Modernisation, emphasises the “creation of future foods” (未来食品制造) like plant-based eggs.

Simultaneously, the country is embracing digitisation to modernise agriculture, as exemplified by a multitude of national plans like the National Smart Agriculture Implementation Plan (2024-2028) and the 14th Five-Year Plan for Agricultural Modernisation (2021-2025). The former includes, among others, the construction of “digital villages” and modern agricultural parks aimed at enhancing productivity through technological innovation. These initiatives are crucial to China’s vision of transforming agriculture through digital technologies and improved efficiency.

Challenges

China’s agricultural transformation is beset by formidable challenges. In addition to concerns about growing import reliance for key agricultural products (such as edible oil), which reshape the country’s food consumption, and extreme weather events which destroys parts of local production, other factors should be considered.

China’s agricultural model, primarily based on small family farms scattered across the country, faces significant challenges to modernisation, particularly in adopting agricultural technologies and standardising practices. These issues hinder productivity and impede advancements in technology and biotechnology needed to meet growing food demands. While technological investments are critical, China must also transition from this fragmented farming structure to a more efficient, technology-driven sector—a transformation still in its early stages and hindered by resistance, especially in rural areas.

Some initiatives like the National Agricultural Technology and Education Cloud Platform aim to address these gaps through online training. But stronger efforts are required to achieve broader agricultural innovation to ensure long-term food security.

Local government debt is another concern. On a national scale, local governments are trapped in a vicious cycle of high debt and dwindling revenues, exacerbated by a real estate crisis that has decimated income from land sales—once a primary funding source for municipalities. In response, the government introduced a 10 trillion (US$1.4 trillion) debt relief package in late 2024. However, this is only a small step toward addressing the escalating financial pressures.

With total government debt expected to rise to nearly 150 percent of gross domestic product by 2030, local governments will face even greater fiscal strain. As a result, this could put investments into agriculture—such as rural infrastructure and technological innovation—at risk.

Smallholder farmers, who manage more than 70 percent of China’s agricultural land, are particularly burdened by these financial constraints. Many also struggle with limited access to credit. Studies show that 18.87 percent of family farms in China face a gap in operating funds. Even among those who obtain formal credit, around 26.20 percent of the surveyed family farms cannot completely bridge the funding gap, further deterring investments in agricultural technologies.

While the government has introduced measures such as a 10 billion yuan (US$1.38 billion) in one-off subsidy in 2023 to boost farmers’ incomes, these efforts fail to tackle the underlying financial and structural barriers. Without comprehensive reforms, China’s agricultural production goals remain in jeopardy.

Concurrently, China grapples with demographic challenges, including declining fertility rates and a shrinking workforce. In 2022, approximately 176.6 million people — or 24.1% of the workforce — were employed in agriculture, fishing, and related industries. The vast majority of this workforce (90 percent) are smallholder farmers. Nevertheless, the average age of agricultural workers is 53, with over a quarter aged 60 or older. This aging population poses a significant barrier to agricultural productivity and wage growth.

Projections are grim. By 2050, the proportion of the country’s agricultural workforce in China could plunge to around 3 percent, while the total agricultural labour force may fall to under 31 million.

These workforce challenges extend beyond agriculture, impacting sectors like transportation and logistics, which are vital to the agricultural supply chain. By the end of 2021, China faced a shortage of 4 million truck drivers, a problem likely to worsen as the working-age population declines and younger people pursue better opportunities in cities. In 2021, the number of rural migrant workers reached 292.51 million, a 2.4 percent (6.91 million) year-on-year increase.

This demographic shift means that China will soon face not only a shrinking agricultural workforce but also fewer rural workers available for critical sectors such as transportation and logistics, essential to maintaining food supply chains.

Conclusion
China’s path to securing food security faces significant challenges, from demographic shifts and financial constraints to over-reliance on imports. While investment in agricultural technology and modernisation is essential, overcoming structural barriers will be crucial. Success in 2025 and beyond will depend on how well China navigates these obstacles and adapts its strategy to the evolving global food landscape.

Genevieve Donnellon-May
Genevieve Donnellon-May
Genevieve Donnellon-May is a geopolitical and global strategy advisor interested in regional resource governance (land, energy, water) and environmental conflict in Asia and Africa. She is also a 2023 CSIS Pacific Young Leader, an Australia-China Emerging Leader, an Australia-Vietnam Young Leader, a 2023 Yenching Global Scholar, and an Asia Society Gen A member. In 2023, Genevieve was shortlisted by the Young Australians in International Affairs as one of the Young Women to Watch in International Affairs. Genevieve holds an MSc in Water Science, Policy and Management from the University of Oxford, and a Bachelor of Arts (Hons.) and a Diploma of Languages from the University of Melbourne. She has held positions as the 2022 Young Australians in International Affairs Climate Fellow as well as at the Institute of Water Policy, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore, and the Asan Institute for Policy Studies, South Korea. Additionally, Genevieve is a member of the Indo-Pacific Circle, a fellow of the Indo-Pacific Studies Center, and a reviewer of peer-reviewed journals.