DeepSeek, AI Agriculture, and China’s Zhejiang Province†
Table of Contents
- The Chinese Leadership and AI Agriculture
- The Role of Zhejiang Province
- Actions Taken by Zhejiang Province
Estimated Reading Time
- 5.5 min
Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison’s struggle to transform agriculture with robot harvesters and other artificial intelligence (“AI”) applications through his venture Sensei Farms may prompt one to wonder whether his vision to “improve human nutrition while preserving the world’s natural resources” can be realized.
“To overcome this challenge, the Chinese leadership has set ambitious goals to develop agriculture utilizing AI.”
Chinese leaders share a similar vision. They feel compelled to turn this idea into reality because of the formidable challenge posed by the need to feed the country’s 1.4 billion people with the limited arable land available—only 11.5 percent of China’s total land area is arable. To overcome this challenge, the Chinese leadership has set ambitious goals to develop agriculture utilizing AI. Will so-called “AI agriculture” take root in China’s soil? While it is not yet clear, the answer could be “yes”, as Zhejiang Province—home to DeepSeek and a few other key AI companies in the country—has been designated to lead the endeavor.
The Chinese Leadership and AI Agriculture
In his annual work report presented in early March, Chinese Premier LI Qiang explains the results of the Chinese government’s work in 2024 and highlights key tasks that the government will focus on in 2025. One key task is to “stimulate the innovative vitality of the digital economy” by “continuing to advance the ‘artificial intelligence +’ action”. Another key task is to “continue strengthening the ability to ensure stable production and supply of grains and other important agricultural products” by “accelerating the research and development and application of advanced and applicable agricultural machinery and equipment”.
In Premier Li’s report, the section regarding agriculture does not explicitly refer to AI. However, AI agriculture is clearly referred to in a significant document on the “comprehensive revitalization of rural areas” jointly issued by the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Committee and the State Council on January 1, 2025. After setting the goals to “ensure national food security”, “prevent large-scale relapse into poverty”, and “improve the level of rural industrial development”, China’s top leaders emphasize in the document the need to develop “new quality productive forces for agriculture”. As the term “new quality productive forces” was coined by President XI Jinping in 2023 to highlight the role of innovations in driving China’s long-term development, these leaders further reiterate in the aforementioned document their support for the “development of smart agriculture” and the “expansion of application scenarios of artificial intelligence, data, […] and other technologies”.
The Role of Zhejiang Province
“The Action Plan specifies that Zhejiang Province should take the lead in China’s ‘pilot implementation of smart agriculture’ by […].”
Neither Premier Li’s report nor the above-mentioned document on the “comprehensive revitalization of rural areas” identify entities designated to play key roles in helping China develop AI agriculture. Such details are, however, provided in the National Smart Agriculture Action Plan (2024-2028) issued by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs. The Action Plan specifies that Zhejiang Province should take the lead in China’s “pilot implementation of smart agriculture” by, for example, building in the province “an area for guiding smart agriculture” and applying various policy measures for promoting technological innovations, attracting talented individuals, and providing fiscal and tax support.
Designated to play this important role, Zhejiang Province is required to reach certain milestones by the end of 2028. The milestones include the cultivation of at least 1,000 “digital agricultural factories” and 100 “future farms” and the development of a batch of “mature and applicable smart agricultural software and hardware products”.
Actions Taken by Zhejiang Province
The clock is ticking for Zhejiang Province. The provincial and lower-level governments have already stepped up and introduced measures to pave the path towards their completion of the 2028 milestones.
Two examples are illustrative. First, in October 2024, the provincial authorities overseeing agriculture and finance issued a document to support the provision of loan interest subsidies to farmers’ cooperatives and other agricultural entities for building “modern facilities for plantation industries” and similar projects. Advanced production facilities, such as multi-span greenhouses and plant factories with year-round production, three-dimensional planting, and AI-controlled systems, are strongly encouraged.
The second example is a set of measures issued in January 2025 by the agricultural and financial authorities in Haishu District of Ningbo City, Zhejiang Province. One of these measures focuses on the management of special funds for the development of “modern agricultural industries”. To encourage the construction of “digital agricultural factories” equipped with advanced systems such as AI-controlled greenhouse systems, these local authorities request that the actual investment amount of such a construction project should be at least RMB 400,000. Projects included in the district’s plan for the construction of digital agricultural factories will be able to receive a one-time subsidy of 30% of the investment amount as long as the subsidy for each project does not exceed RMB 2 million. Each of those projects that wins recognition from Ningbo City or the province may receive a reward of RMB 50,000 or RMB 100,000, respectively.
The coming years will reveal how Zhejiang agricultural entities leverage these financial incentives and official support to engage the province’s AI companies, such as DeepSeek, in developing AI agriculture. If Zhejiang Province succeeds, its experiences will be beneficial to not only other provinces in China but also the rest of the world. Undernourished citizens around the world will then see a ray of hope, once it is realized that the vision to “improve human nutrition while preserving the world’s natural resources” is not an illusion after all.
- The citation of this article is: The Editorial Board of SINOTALKS®, DeepSeek, AI Agriculture, and China’s Zhejiang Province, SINOTALKS.COM®, SinoExpress™, Mar. 12, 2025, https://sinotalks.com/sinoexpress/202503-english-ai-agriculture-china. ↩︎
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