From The Editor

Renee Targos Editor

“Victory comes from finding opportunities in problems.”
— Sun Tzu

China, like many other countries, faces multiple agricultural challenges.

There’s the problem of reduced arable land.

Approximately 400,000 hectares of arable land is lost each year in China, with now only around 128 million hectares of land left for growing food as reported by China’s Institute of Soil Sciences.

Then there’s the workforce.

“In just two decades, China’s agricultural labor force has been more than halved—a loss of 194 million. In the most recent decade from 2012 to 2021, the agricultural labor force has declined by a third, a loss of 85 million,” stated by Qian Forrest Zhang and Meiling Wu in a 2024 article.

These aren’t problems unique to China. Globally, growers are facing shortages of arable land, water, and workforce with some climate change thrown in for good measure. Farmers must meet the demands to feed an increasing population—and ag tech might be the solution.

China’s government and businesses appear to be embracing ag tech.

While China’s arable land is shrinking, the country leads globally in its use of greenhouses. The University of Copenhagen published a top ten countries accounting for the largest amount of greenhouse coverage. They rated China at 60.4%. Spain was in second place at 5.6% and Italy in third place at 4.1%. Mexico came in fourth at 3.3%.

ResearchAndMarkets.com came out with the “China Agriculture Equipment Market by Equipment, Tractor, Harvesting, Planting, Spraying, Company Analysis 2025-2033” report,  that states: “The China agriculture equipment market is expected to increase impressively, reaching US$41.18 billion by 2033 from US$24.13 billion in 2024. The industry is expected to witness growth at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.12% during 2025-2033.”

The report cites key drivers of government initiatives, technological advancements, and demand for increased production and efficiency.

“Integration of such technologies like GPS, IoT, and AI into agricultural equipment is transforming Chinese farming. Smart tractors, crop monitoring drones, and automated irrigation systems all increase the resource utilization efficiency while improving productivity. The technological innovation will help bridge the labor shortage gap in China by accurately completing the farming process. Not to forget, the shift to electric and environment-friendly machinery helps China in fulfilling its sustainability vision, hence it becomes attractive for the farmer as well,” the report states.

Companies like XAG Co. Ltd, a drone manufacturer based in China, introduced several new products at its annual tech conference last year to support unmanned agricultural production.

While the challenges ahead seem daunting, the move to ag tech is one that China is leading the world in with their adoption of drones and growth toward automation. In my editorial for last year’s China edition, Chinese growers used 4,000 ag drones in 2016, which grew to 120,000 ag drones in 2021 as reported by the National Agro-Tech Extension and Service Center (NATESC).

Crop protection companies aren’t far behind in using ag tech to formulate and formulating products for ag tech.

Syngenta announced recently announced its partnership with the artificial intelligence (AI) company TraitSeq to use AI for the development of innovative biostimulants.

When facing what could be another tough year, look to the future and get your business ready to embrace the opportunities that might be coming from the ag tech space. •