Theoretical framework and realization pathway of agricultural green development

Agricultural green development, as a novel concept, technical pattern and systematic procedure, is the new direction of China's agricultural development, but many theoretical and scientific questions about agricultural green development remain unsolved. In this study, we described the theoretical framework and the realization route of agricultural green development in China. Compared with sustainable agricultural development overseas, China's agricultural green development is considered to focus more on the synergy of "green" and "development", and emphasis the characterized as "green" led by "development" and "development" promoted by "green", which in turn poses difficult challenges for China's agricultural green development. Ten key points of agricultural green development are proposed in this paper, namely: focusing on food systems; persisting in the two themes, i.e., green and development; reinforcing the three pillars, i.e., society, economy and ecological environment; focusing on the four interfaces, i.e., resources, production, consumption and environment; coordinating the relationships among five stakeholders, i.e., government, farmers, companies, retailers and consumers; following the eight principles, which are input control, resource cycling for improving efficiency, potential realization through integrated management, emission reduction, integration for value appreciation, diet optimization for environmental pressure alleviation, policy mechanism guarantee, and local implementation; respecting the rules of four processes, including materials, energy, information and value flows; innovating the regulatory measures in seven sections of green development, i.e., policy, capital, services, technology, products, knowledge and engineering; taking the three paths of transforming towards, which are the ecological environmental control mechanisms based on green development checkpoints, the implementation of the whole industrial chain green policy and technology, the optimization and regulation of food supply and demand; and realizing these paths through the nine approaches. Eventually, the coordination of the six agriculture-related goals in the social, economic, productivity, ecological, environmental, and resource sectors will be achieved. We propose to enhance key researches on agricultural green development theory, technology, and strategy. We also propose to implement the "five-one" agricultural green development technical engineering projects that promote China's agricultural green development as early as possible, namely, "one basic database, one batch of technical equipment, one set of science and technology platforms, one batch of demonstration projects and one series of think tank achievements".