What Does Low-Carbon Agriculture Entering Document No. 1 Mean?

I. Climate Change in Document No. 1

Yet this does not mean that Document No. 1 — which has centred on agriculture, rural areas and farmers for 22 consecutive years — is only now beginning to consider the relationship between climate change and agriculture. As early as 2010, when climate change first appeared in Document No. 1, it featured in the very second paragraph, setting the tone from the outset: “The impact of climate change on agricultural production is growing day by day; favourable conditions and positive factors for the development of agriculture and rural areas are accumulating, while various traditional and non-traditional challenges are also becoming increasingly apparent.” This demonstrates that policymakers have long recognised the profound impact of climate change on Chinese agriculture.

In 2012, again in the second paragraph, Document No. 1 once more linked climate change with the challenges facing China’s agriculture, with a palpable sense of urgency: “The impact of global climate change is deepening; the pressures of arable land and freshwater resource shortages in China are mounting; the risks and uncertainties facing agricultural development have risen markedly; and the task of consolidating and building on the favourable situation in agriculture and rural areas has become more arduous.”

In the same year, in the section on agricultural technology extension, the document proposed “significantly increasing subsidies for key technologies and good methods for agricultural disaster prevention and mitigation, stable production and yield increase”, as well as expanding the coverage of public meteorological services in agriculture and rural areas and raising the scientific and technological level of agricultural meteorological services and rural meteorological disaster defence.

Interestingly, from then on, the word “climate” was largely absent from Document No. 1 for a long stretch. It was not until 2022 that it “returned as a champion”, appearing in the first paragraph with a notably stern tone, placed alongside the year’s most pressing issue: “At present, the global pandemic continues to spread, the recovery of the world economy is fragile, the challenges posed by climate change are prominent, and the tasks of our country’s economic and social development are extremely demanding and arduous.” Moreover, in the section on effectively preventing and responding to major agricultural disasters, it proposed to “strengthen research on the medium- and long-term impact of climate change on agriculture”.

However, in the Central Document No. 1 over those three years, climate change was more like an invisible yet enormous shadow, with few specific work arrangements. It was not until 2023 that the climate agenda had a concrete point of action in Document No. 1 for the first time: in the section on strengthening agricultural disaster prevention and mitigation capacity, it proposed to “study and carry out a new round of agricultural climate resource survey and agricultural climate zoning work”.

The outcome of that research is reflected in the 2026 Central Document No. 1, where the word “study” has been removed and the wording has become a more direct call to action: “Carry out agricultural climate resource surveys and zoning, strengthen monitoring, forecasting and early warning for meteorological, hydrological and geological disasters, and improve the capacity to cope with extreme weather.”

II. Disaster Prevention and Mitigation and Climate Change

Over the past few years, multiple unexpected droughts, floods and extreme weather events have struck every year, with disasters once described as “once-in-fifty-years” or “once-in-a-century” occurring almost annually. To take just last year as an example, the unforgettable flood and waterlogging disasters continued unabated, especially in northern China: from 23 July onwards, extraordinary rainstorms hit large parts of the north, with rainfall records at 13 national meteorological stations shattered and historical extremes surpassed; in Yi County, Hebei, it is said that “a single day delivered the province’s entire annual rainfall”. In Miyun, one of the areas worst hit in Beijing, a heavily invested farm was swept away, its land stripped of topsoil, and to this day it remains uncultivable, with economic losses reaching 30 million yuan.

By October, prolonged rainfall and resulting waterlogging disasters across the Huang-Huai-Hai region and the whole of North China disrupted the autumn harvest. Wheeled combine harvesters could not access the waterlogged fields, grain drying towers and other drying equipment were in short supply, and many farmers’ maize went mouldy and rotted. In the countryside of Hebei, water pooled in low-lying, flat fields with no way to drain away. Meanwhile, in southwest China, a consecutive winter–spring drought was underway.

These extreme weather events can, to varying degrees, be traced back to climate change. The flood and waterlogging disasters in the main northern production areas have been particularly harrowing. This year’s Central Document No. 1 specifically called for “strengthening the development of flood control and drainage systems in northern regions and moderately raising construction standards”, and stressed “the deployment and mobilisation of disaster-relief machinery”.

A source close to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs told Foodthink that responding to extreme disasters caused by climate change is currently one of the ministry’s key priorities. In recent years, the focus of China’s agricultural production system development has been on building agricultural resilience for disaster prevention, mitigation and relief. For instance, in 2024, the ministry established information-sharing mechanisms with meteorological, water conservancy and emergency management departments to monitor disaster situations, and holds monthly consultations with the meteorological bureau, issuing climate trend bulletins and more. It has also joined with four provinces (and one autonomous region) in northeast China to carry out ditch and channel remediation on northern farmland.

If climate change has previously appeared in the Central Document No. 1 only as an agricultural risk to be adapted to, then the first-ever appearance of “low-carbon agriculture” this year signals that agriculture, too, is expected to take part in emission reductions. Although concepts close to “low-carbon agriculture”, such as green development and ecological agriculture, have frequently featured in Document No. 1, they have generally appeared in the guise of pollution reduction or food safety. Stepping outside the framework of Document No. 1, whether in terms of mitigation or adaptation, climate change has been the overarching backdrop to China’s agricultural green development since 2020.

But the key to the success of “low-carbon agriculture” lies in ensuring that farmers benefit, not that they bear the cost of the green transition — whether it is bans on straw burning or the heating dilemma in northern rural areas, there are already less-than-successful cautionary tales that demand reflection.

In September 2025, Foodthink published its report Research Pathways for Rural Social Organisations Responding to Climate Change, which pointed out that farmers have long been the most sensitive observers and victims of climate change, yet resources dedicated to paying attention to them and lending them support have been exceedingly scarce.

Meanwhile, farmers also face inequalities in both discourse and policy: from a mitigation standpoint, small and medium-sized farm households — particularly those practising ecological agriculture — have lower emissions, whether in production or daily life, than large-scale industrial agriculture or urban residents, yet their contribution to emission reduction goes unrecognised; from an adaptation standpoint, they are more sensitive and more vulnerable than other groups.

At the operational level, based on interviews with a large number of rural social organisations and frontline workers, Foodthink has found that many organisations, pushed forward by climate funders, actually enter rural areas with a starting intention of tackling emission reduction and pollution control, hoping to reduce methane emissions — one of the major greenhouse gases generated by crop cultivation.

But once they engage with the complex realities of rural life, they often find themselves having to address farmers’ more pressing needs first — water shortages, lack of funding, rural depopulation. In reality, it is only on the foundation of community work that “low-carbon agriculture” can truly take root.

When it comes to the specific goal of promoting green technologies, policy also needs to address farmers’ distrust of and unfamiliarity with new methods. On 28 February, a report titled Green Transformation of Agriculture against the Backdrop of Chinese-Style Modernisation, led by experts and scholars from within the system and co-published by multiple social organisations, also introduced low-carbon agriculture as a key concept for China’s agriculture to respond to climate change. However, the report also observed: “The promotion and adoption of green agricultural technologies is essentially a social behaviour; it requires social support and in turn produces social impact. Yet China’s green transformation of agriculture has underestimated this.” In other words, if ordinary farmers cannot participate in these new technologies and methods, the goals of the green transition will be difficult to achieve.

Faced with these challenges, grassroots organisations have the advantages of flexibility, professionalism and proximity to communities, and can help bridge the vast gap between policy formulation and implementation. The report called for strengthening the capacity-building of social organisations and also for enhancing their voice in the transition.

In fact, climate change has also become a magnifying glass for rural development issues: it not only widens the urban–rural divide and intergenerational inequality but also makes the position of vulnerable rural groups even more precarious. Whether government or social organisations, when responding to climate issues, if they fail to include smallholders and rural communities in their logic of action, they risk becoming mere executors of externally imposed will, unable to genuinely build community resilience or achieve the dual-carbon targets.

Achieving the climate goals set out in Central Document No. 1 will never be possible on the strength of grand terms alone such as “low-carbon agriculture”, “resource surveys” and “climate zoning”. The real test — and the key to making Document No. 1 truly land — is how to design policies on the basis of these concepts and tools that enable ordinary farmers to participate and benefit.

References

Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs of the People’s Republic of China, China’s Rural Revitalisation Development Report 2024, 2025, China Agriculture Press

“Implementation Opinions of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs on Implementing the Opinions of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council on Solidly Advancing Comprehensive Rural Revitalisation in Pursuit of Agricultural and Rural Modernisation”, 19 January 2026, https://nyj.yl.gov.cn/yw/zslb/202602/t20260206_2073506.html

The Paper account of the “China Meteorological Administration”, “Reporter’s Observation | Central Document No. 1 Raises ‘Agricultural Climate Resource Surveys and Zoning’ Again — What Lies Behind It?”, https://m.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_32535311

State Council, National Master Plan for Irrigation Development (2012–2030), 2013

Hu Xueping et al., “Analysis of the Causes of Consecutive Droughts in South-West China from 2009 to 2013”, 2021, Meteorology, http://qxqk.nmc.cn/html/2014/10/20141006.html

Central Document No. 1 from successive years, among others

Foodthink Author

Pei Dan

A writer back on the right path, focused on climate change, the ecological environment, and the real people shaped by change.