China Economic Roundtable｜Experts: Seize the opportunities of digital rural construction to promote development

Xinhua News Agency, Beijing, November 12 (Reporter Hu Lu) Zhao Changbao, director of the Rural Economic Research Center of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, said in the "China Economic Roundtable" large-scale all-media interview program launched by Xinhua News Agency on November 12 that agriculture and rural areas are currently facing digital and intelligent changes, and agricultural enterprises can seize opportunities to promote development.

This year’s Central Government Document No. 1 proposed promoting the integration of artificial intelligence and agricultural development. The Cyberspace Administration of China, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology released the "Action Plan for High-Quality Development of Digital Rural Areas (2026-2030)", which clarified the ideas, goals, key tasks, and policy measures to promote high-quality development of digital rural areas during the "15th Five-Year Plan" period.

"Judging from the current development situation, we are confident." Zhao Changbao said that currently the 5G access rate in administrative villages across the country exceeds 95%, the rural Internet penetration rate has increased to 69.5%, and the informatization rate of agricultural production has increased by about 2 percentage points per year on average. In 2025, rural online retail sales will exceed 3 trillion yuan for the first time.

He believes that agricultural enterprises should seize this transformation opportunity from three aspects:

The first is to provide "down-to-earth" lightweight solutions. It is impossible for small farmers and small and medium-sized business entities to build high-cost digital systems. What enterprises really need to work hard on are low-cost, low-threshold, and easy-to-operate products and services.

The second is to integrate into the larger system of agricultural social services. Digitalization must be integrated with social service networks such as agricultural machinery, agricultural technology, drying, and warehousing. Enterprises can provide digital tools and data capabilities to make precise operations and production-marketing docking run more smoothly, allowing small farmers to share the cost reduction and efficiency gains of digitalization in managed services.

The third is to make a fuss about data integration and quality improvement of the entire industry chain. Digital technology can record inputs at the production end, control standards at the processing end, and achieve traceability at the circulation end. If companies can open up the data chain, there will be hard support for brand building and premium space.

Zhao Changbao said that digital countryside and smart agriculture are still in the stage of leapfrogging from "usable" to "easy to use and universally beneficial", and there is still a cost threshold for technology implementation. The key for agricultural enterprises to seize opportunities is not to pursue the most dazzling technological concepts, but to incorporate technology into real agricultural production scenarios and into account books that farmers can calculate. Whoever can help farmers reduce costs, stabilize output, and improve quality will be able to gain a firm foothold in this process.