Agriculture green development in China: insights and advances

Highlights

● Agriculture green development (AGD) has been undertaken in China for 5 years.

● New insights and advances on the four themes of AGD in China are elucidated.

● AGD involves interdisciplinary research innovation, multistakeholder participation, multi-objective realization and regional-specific technology implementation.

● Implementation of AGD in China will provide valuable experience paradigm for the world.

Abstract

Reconciling the tasks of producing adequate amounts of nutritious food for the increasing global population while preserving the environment and natural ecosystems simultaneously is an enormous challenge. The concept of agriculture green development (AGD) and the necessary governmental policies were developed to address the aforementioned challenge in China and to help achieve the related global sustainable development goals. Agriculture green development emphasizes the synergy between green and development; current agriculture has to transform from the intensive farming with high inputs, high environmental impacts and low resource-use efficiency to a more sustainable agriculture, in order to ensure an adequate supply of nutritious food while delivering environmental integrity, improved economic profitability, and social equity. A research program on AGD was established by China Agricultural University with four research themes, namely: green crop production, green integrated crop-animal production, green food and industry, and green ecological environment and ecosystem services, to provide a scientific basis for future developments and to facilitate the implementation of AGD in practice. AGD requires a multistakeholder approach, fueled by innovative and interdisciplinary research. Joint actions have to be taken by governments, farmers, supply industries, consumers, educators, extension services and researchers to support AGD. This requires strong coordination and public awareness campaigns. This review presents the progress that has been made over the past 5 years and makes recommendations for more research and development, in order to better deliver agricultural green and sustainable development on national and international scales.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

Agriculture / ecosystem services / environmental protection / food security / green development / multi-sectoral cooperation / sustainable development

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Acknowledgements

This study was financially supported by a project of Beijing’s Top-Precision-Advanced Disciplines, the CSC-AGD PhD Program from China Scholarship Council, the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2023YFD1901500, 2023YFD1901502), the Key Consulting Project of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, Yunnan Rural Revitalization Science and Technology Project, PR China (202104BI090004) and the 2115 Talent Development Program of China Agricultural University.

Compliance with ethics guidelines

Jianbo Shen, Qichao Zhu, Yong Hou, Wen-Feng Cong, Wen Xu, Jiuliang Xu, Zhichao An, Xiaoqiang Jiao, Kai Zhang, Tianxiang Yu, Lin Ma, Oene Oenema, William J. Davies, and Fusuo Zhang declare that they have no conflicts of interest or financial conflicts to disclose. This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

The Author(s) 2024. Published by Higher Education Press. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)