Urban-style modern agriculture

In recent years, Beijing has accelerated its agricultural development, making progress with urban-style modern agriculture, combined agriculture with environmental construction and strengthened the city’s ecological, recreational, tourist and cultural agricultural functions.

In 2016,  the annual ecological service value of Beijing’s urban-style modern agriculture totaled 353.1 billion yuan ($ 53.43 billion), a growth of 6.8 percent compared to the previous year; it’s discounted present value was 1.06 trillion yuan ($ 160.41 billion), an increase of 3.2 percent over the previous year.

The annual ecological service value includes three parts: direct economic value of 39.64 billion yuan ($ 6 billion),  a drop of 6.2 percent compared to the previous year; indirect economic value of  114.98 billion yuan ($ 17.4 billion), an increase of 7.7 percent over the previous year; and ecological and environmental value of 198.48 billion yuan ($ 30.03 billion), an increase of 9.2 percent over the previous year, which accounted for 11.2 percent, 32.6 percent and 56.2 percent of the total annual value respectively.

In 2016, Beijing accelerated the reform of agricultural structure and the change of agricultural development pattern, promoting the development of urban-style modern agriculture, which further shrank traditional agriculture in the city.

Beijing has also strengthened regional cooperation, establishing 600,000 mu (40,000 hectares) of vegetable gardens outside the city.

During the 13th Five-Year Program (2016-2020), Beijing will completely build up an urban-style modern agriculture, water-economized agriculture and lead the coordinated development of Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei Province, realizing high-level modern agriculture.