From chips to robots, the invitees to Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s meeting with private entrepreneurs last month represented sectors that mostly came as no surprise. That is, except for one group: the Big Food bosses.

Founders of four large agricultural companies were given prime seats at the carefully choreographed gathering: all were seated in the first row; one was among a handful invited to speak. Positioning pig producers and milk formula makers ahead of the likes of Alibaba’s Jack Ma sent a clear message: to realize its food security ambitions, Xi needs the support of the private sector. 

That’s because, after years of haranguing farmers to grow more staple grains to realize China’s food self-sufficiency goals, Chinese officials are running out of ways to drive up yields using policy alone. Innovations from China’s private agricultural companies, from genetically modified seeds to drones and multi-story ‘pig hotels,’ instead promise the breakthrough solutions Beijing now requires. 

“Agriculture is an incredibly technically intensive industry,” says Even Pay, a director at Trivium China specializing in agriculture. “China’s priorities are very heavily focused on efficiency and breaking tech bottlenecks in crop research and livestock. The reason [these entrepreneurs were] in the room is that they represent some of the largest and most innovative companies in China’s agrifood sector.”

The trade war with the first Trump administration and the war in Ukraine exacerbated Chinese leaders’ longstanding fears of leaning on imports for staple foods such as wheat and soybeans. In recent years, China has reduced its dependence on U.S. imports by buying more from countries like Brazil and upped its domestic output: The country is already highly independent in many staple grains — over 90 percent in wheat and corn, and close to 100 percent in rice.

Nonetheless, disruptions from worsening climate change and the deepening trade war mean Xi remains anxious to ensure China can feed itself indefinitely. Last June, Beijing enacted a new law aimed at achieving “absolute self-sufficiency” in staple grains, including strict fines for converting farmland to growing non-staple crops. One third of the latest Document Number One, China’s annual agriculture and rural development strategy published last month, is dedicated to food security.

To date, the job of boosting production has largely fallen on the shoulders of local government officials. They have been successful in inching up staple crop yields, but their efforts are yielding diminishing returns and face growing tradeoffs. China’s average year-on-year agricultural productivity growth between 2018 and 2022 was 15 percent lower than over the same period ten years prior, according to the most recent data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service. 

China has been pretty specific about having its own seed suppliers, trying to have its own champions rather than importing from a company like Dupont.

Wendong Zhang, a professor at Cornell University’s Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management

Reports abound of farmers forced to forgo cash crops that earn higher incomes to grow staple grains. And while for decades China promoted a ‘Grain for Green’ program that encouraged farmers to plant trees on retired farmland, part of an ambitious reforestation initiative, now “they’re doing green for grain, cutting down trees and planting grain,” says Scott Rozelle, a development economist at Stanford University. 

Private companies have historically played a limited role in China’s agricultural sector. Restrictions on corporate farming limited the role of private firms on the ground. China’s longtime reluctance to approve genetically modified organism (GMO) seeds, meanwhile, discouraged many private companies from investing in GMO research — state-backed labs account for the vast majority of research spending. 

But Beijing’s u-turn on GMOs in 2022 and approvals of new batches of GMO seeds across a larger variety of crops have created an opening for private players. Companies are also pouring more investment into gene editing research, which is less controversial than gene modification because it involves making changes to an organism’s DNA rather than introducing a foreign gene. 

Li Denghai, founder of Denghai Seeds, was one of the four business leaders from the agricultural sector invited to Xi’s meeting last month. Li, known in China as the ‘king of corn,’ made his name by building a company around corn varieties improved through selective breeding. The company was also early in investing in GMO research: its seeds were among the first to be greenlit for distribution in China in late 2023. 

“[Denghai] is very much on track to be a leader as China begins to approve domestic planting of GMO and gene edited crops,” says Pay.

“China has been pretty specific about having its own seed suppliers, trying to have its own champions rather than importing from a company like Dupont,” says Wendong Zhang, a professor at Cornell University’s Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management. Advances in gene editing technology have also allowed Chinese companies to catch up and develop new seed varieties more quickly, he adds, reducing development timelines to 2-5 years rather than up to two decades previously. 

The rollout of GMO crops in China remains limited. While no official numbers exist, Trivium’s Pay estimates that just 3-5 percent of China’s corn planting area comes from GMO seeds. Part of the reason is that seed producers need time to scale up. Public opinion in China remains wary of the technology, after years of warnings from state media about the danger of GMOs. 

“As recently as a decade ago doctors were warning in People’s Daily that people of childbearing age and children should avoid GMOs for their health,” says Darin Friedrichs, founder of Sitonia Consulting, which specializes in China’s agriculture commodity markets. “It’s going to take a lot to turn the tide.”

Seed developers aren’t the only private firms trying to make breakthroughs in farm productivity. In the aftermath of the 2020-2023 tech crackdown, a wave of Chinese tech entrepreneurs made pledges to invest their wealth into ‘ag-tech.’ Jack Ma, for example, traveled across Europe on an agriculture study tour in 2021, while education firm New Oriental pivoted to selling vegetables after Beijing’s ban on private tutoring. 

Five years later, “it does feel like a lot of it is for show,” says Sitonia’s Friedrichs. “But one noticeable improvement has come from DJI and drones for pesticide and fertilizer applications.” The Shenzhen-based commercial drone company has built a fledgling side business selling drones for agriculture, enabling a cottage industry of drone operators to offer their services to local farmers. 

“If you’re a small holder and you’ve got a relatively small yield, it can be time consuming to pull the weeds and hire somebody to do that,” explains Friedrichs. “These guys travel the country and offer to help someone spray their field, charge 100 [RMB] and it’ll be done in an hour.”

How do you keep ten thousand pigs in the same place and healthy and well, fed with good feed? In 2012, China’s firms did not know how to do that. In 2025, Chinese pig farming is the best in the world at scale. If that’s not innovation, I don’t know what it is.

Even Pay, a director at Trivium China specializing in agriculture

Another area where private companies have helped to fill the gap: livestock management. “Pork represents the most important component of the Chinese diet in terms of meat,” says Cornell’s Zhang. Two of the companies present at the Xi meeting, New Hope Group and Muyuan Foods, specialize in pigs. “Their inclusion reflects the explicit significance of the sector,” he says.

The decimation of China’s pig stock between 2018 and 2021, when African Swine Fever (ASF) forced farmers to cull as many as 100 million pigs, prompted a consolidation of the industry. Cheap loans from the Chinese government helped the largest firms aggressively rebuild their stocks, while encouraging them to invest in better biosecurity measures. These days, companies like Muyuan can raise tens of thousands of pigs in high-rise ‘hog hotels,’ where animals can be monitored for illness and isolated from pathogens.

“How do you keep ten thousand pigs in the same place and healthy and well, fed with good feed?” says Pay. “In 2012, China’s firms did not know how to do that. In 2025, Chinese pig farming is the best in the world at scale. If that’s not innovation, I don’t know what it is.”

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