China’s agricultural machinery and equipment manufacturing industry is transitioning from a major player to a global leader.

　　Agricultural machinery and equipment are indispensable tools for enhancing agricultural productivity, ensuring the efficient use of resources, and advancing sustainable agricultural development. They play a crucial role in safeguarding national food security, boosting agricultural output and efficiency, diversifying farmers’ income sources, and driving rural development.

　　As an industry within the equipment manufacturing sector that is closely linked to agriculture, China has established a robust and sustained policy framework for the agricultural machinery industry and implemented stable fiscal and tax support. These measures have enabled a rapid enhancement of the sector’s overall competitiveness, with annual growth rates exceeding 20% in gross industrial output value, sales revenue, total profits, and import‑export trade volume. Today, the industry’s economic scale ranks among the highest in the world. Production volumes of tractors, combine harvesters, crop‑protection machinery, and agricultural water pumps all occupy leading positions globally.

　　At present, China is at an important stage of accelerated industrialization, urbanization, and agricultural modernization, with domestic demand for agricultural machinery remaining in a period of rapid growth. The speeding up of agricultural modernization and the industrialization of agriculture are creating vast opportunities for the agricultural machinery sector. However, compared with developed industrial nations, China’s agricultural machinery and equipment industry still has considerable room for improvement. To seize the opportunities presented by the national strategies of “Made in China 2025” and the Belt and Road Initiative, China’s agricultural machinery manufacturing sector must cultivate core competitiveness, achieve breakthroughs through innovation, and undertake strategic adjustments to adapt to the new normal of the economy by optimizing its industrial structure—thereby injecting fresh momentum into the industry and realizing the transition from a major manufacturing country to a manufacturing powerhouse.

　　Development Trends in the Agricultural Machinery and Equipment Manufacturing Industry

　　Agricultural machinery and equipment, as a key means of enhancing agricultural productivity, has evolved from mechanization—replacing human and animal power—to automation based on electronic control technologies, and is now advancing toward intelligent systems and advanced manufacturing centered on information technology. A defining feature is that these systems integrate electronics, information science, biotechnology, environmental engineering, materials science, and modern manufacturing, continuously improving the adaptability of equipment, expanding operational capabilities, ensuring reliable performance during peak seasonal labor demands, refining the fabrication of complex structures, and fostering greater harmony among soil, crops, livestock, machinery, humans, and the ecological environment. Guided by the goal of building a resource‑efficient, environmentally friendly agriculture, this approach seeks to achieve comprehensive resource recycling and the sustainable development and protection of the agricultural ecosystem, while developing next‑generation agricultural machinery and equipment that are “safe, versatile, automated, and intelligent,” thereby underpinning the sustainable growth of agriculture.

　　Development Goals and Pathways

　　The development path of the agricultural machinery and equipment manufacturing industry is as follows: establish platforms for scientific and technological innovation to enhance independent R&D capabilities; adjust the industrial structure to move toward greater rationality; promote green manufacturing and energy conservation and emissions reduction, widely adopt advanced manufacturing technologies, and drive industrial upgrading; and, by achieving breakthroughs in product technology, significantly improve the product mix.

　　Its development goals are as follows: By 2020, establish and consolidate capabilities in the testing, validation, and development of core components and complete machines, along with coordinated supply-chain support; achieve a 90% market share for domestically produced agricultural machinery; and secure a 30% market share for products such as large tractors above 200 horsepower and cotton pickers. By 2025, ensure a full range of mechanized equipment covering the entire production process for major grain crops and strategic cash crops, maintain a stable domestic market share of over 95% for agricultural machinery, and attain a 60% market share for high-end products such as large tractors above 200 horsepower and cotton pickers.

　　The task of development

　　The agricultural machinery and equipment manufacturing sector must pursue innovation-driven development, advance intelligent transformation, and strengthen its industrial foundation. It should develop agricultural machinery and equipment for key production stages in the cultivation of grains, meat, eggs, dairy, fruits, and vegetables, as well as for crops such as cotton, oilseeds, sugar, and rubber, while integrating end-to-end mechanization solutions and complete sets of equipment. Furthermore, it should research and master technology-intensive agricultural machinery products and their manufacturing technologies, including continuously variable‑transmission large tractors, variable‑rate multi‑operation implements, combine harvesters, precision, low‑pollution large self‑propelled sprayers, seed‑breeding and fine sorting‑processing equipment, and intelligent systems for healthy livestock farming. The sector must also achieve breakthroughs in critical component performance and reliability—such as heavy‑duty diesel engines, continuously variable transmissions, electronic control systems, hydraulic drive technologies, and object‑recognition and monitoring systems for both plant and animal targets. Moreover, it should integrate mobile internet, cloud computing, big data, and the Internet of Things with modern agricultural machinery and equipment manufacturing, advancing comprehensive, end-to-end solutions that provide multifaceted support for operations, services, and information based on agricultural production, and creating a new generation of agricultural machinery equipped with capabilities for information acquisition, intelligent decision‑making, and autonomous operation. Finally, efforts should be intensified to build a robust industry technical standards system, an industry‑wide information‑data service platform, enhanced testing and inspection capacities, and digital design platforms for products. The adoption of digitalization, intelligent technologies, clean production, virtual manufacturing, networked manufacturing, concurrent engineering, modularity, and rapid resource reconfiguration should be promoted.

　　Enhance the industry’s domestic and international competitiveness by leveraging innovation.

　　Through original innovation, integrated innovation, and the introduction, digestion, absorption, and re‑innovation of advanced technologies, we aim to achieve breakthroughs in landmark intelligent, energy‑saving, and environmentally friendly major equipment and key core components, thereby narrowing the gap with international cutting‑edge standards. While substituting for imports, we will leverage leading backbone enterprises to establish business management and operational platforms aligned with future internationalization, proactively “go global,” enter the global agricultural equipment market, and pursue an international development strategy. By elevating product technology and quality, building a worldwide marketing and service network, promoting the export of high‑value‑added products, and gradually cultivating brand advantages, we will raise the overall level of the industry.

　　Innovative development models provide support for ensuring national food security.

　　As one of the ten priority sectors under the “Made in China 2025” initiative, the agricultural machinery and equipment manufacturing industry is seizing this opportunity to address critical technical challenges—namely, high safety, high reliability, and high adaptability—in agricultural machinery. By fostering deep integration between digital and intelligent technologies and agricultural equipment, the sector aims to achieve automation, intelligence, and specialization in agricultural production. Leveraging advanced, environmentally friendly agricultural machinery that features low emissions, minimal pollution, and high energy efficiency, it seeks to enhance the information‑gathering, intelligent decision‑making, and operational capabilities of its products, thereby elevating the level of modern agricultural production. At the same time, the industry is committed to advancing end-to-end solutions that provide comprehensive support across operations, services, and information systems, driving the upgrading of the agricultural equipment industry and positioning China as a global leader in agricultural machinery and equipment manufacturing.