The quality of agricultural products affects both the consumer experience and farmers' incomes. The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs recently issued the "15th Five-Year Plan for National Agricultural Product Quality Improvement," setting out a series of measures that define the main goals and key tasks for improving agricultural product quality over the next five years. Two critical numbers stand out in the plan.
The plan specifies that by 2030, the national pass rate for routine monitoring of agricultural product quality and safety should remain stable above 98 percent, while the total number of green, organic, famous, special, premium, and geographical indication agricultural products should reach 130,000. One number safeguards the bottom line, the other drives development.
Taking the pass rate first: quality and safety form the foundation of quality improvement. During the 14th Five-Year Plan period, the pass rate remained generally stable above 97.5 percent, reaching 98 percent for the first time in 2024. The plan's call to "stabilize" at this historic high is about holding the quality and safety bottom line with high standards, so that consumers can buy with confidence and eat with peace of mind.
As for the 130,000 target, it serves as a powerful lever for advancing quality improvement. By the end of 2025, the total number of these categories of agricultural products exceeded 88,000. This means that during the 15th Five-Year Plan period, more than 40,000 new certifications and registrations will be needed — over 4,000 more than the 36,000 during the 14th Five-Year Plan period.
How will these goals be achieved?
The plan outlines six key tasks. Among them, three areas are most directly relevant to consumers buying groceries and farmers selling their products.
Standards in production: giving quality improvement clear rules to follow
Whether agricultural products are of good quality depends not only on varieties but also on the production environment, management practices, fertilization and pesticide use. In the past, some agricultural production relied mainly on experience. Experience has value, but different producers manage things differently, making product quality prone to variation. The plan calls for improving the standards system for high-quality agricultural development, and refining standards for pesticide and veterinary drug residues, industry support, and quality improvement. Improving standards for production technology, pesticide and veterinary drug residues, and quality evaluation is about letting producers know how to plant and raise properly, giving regulators and evaluators a basis to work from, and pushing agricultural product quality from reliance on experience toward a more standardized and stable direction.
Safety checks throughout the process: covering every checkpoint with oversight
Oversight is not just about finding problems — it is about detecting risks early, clarifying responsibilities, and securing the safety of agricultural products before they reach the market. The plan calls for strengthening risk assessment and monitoring of agricultural product quality and safety, strictly managing the production, sale, and use of banned and restricted pesticides and veterinary drugs, fully implementing the commitment-based compliance certificate system, and advancing smart supervision of agricultural product quality and safety. Technical staff are developing intelligent query systems using AI large models. Where oversight once relied mainly on inspections and spot checks, the future will rely more on full-process supervision, one-code traceability, and artificial intelligence to promote traceability across the entire agricultural product supply chain and better connect production, testing, and distribution. Producers and operators will have clearer responsibilities, and consumers will feel more at ease.
Grading in the market: letting quality products command better value
Improving agricultural product quality also requires full alignment with the market. The plan calls for establishing a market-demand-oriented quality grading system for agricultural products, strengthening quality evaluation, and enhancing production-sales coordination. In other words, the quality differences among agricultural products should be further clarified in the future, so that products of different quality levels have corresponding evaluation criteria and sales channels. At the same time, for high-quality agricultural products to sell well, brand building, sales coordination, and post-harvest handling must be aligned with market demand. Only when quality advantages are recognized by consumers and accepted by the market will producers have more incentive to keep investing. Digital sorting equipment can perform washing, blow-drying, and precise grading. Take the citrus industry in Yichang, Hubei Province, as an example. Local authorities issued group standards such as "Yichang Mandarin" and "Zigui Navel Orange," grading products into premium, first-grade, and second-grade categories, with anything below second grade classified as ordinary fruit. On the sales side, premium fruit goes to high-end channels, first-grade fruit to regular supermarkets, and second-grade fruit to juice processing. By linking grading evaluation with channel sales, quality differences can be better translated into market value.
Improving agricultural product quality means ensuring that everyone can buy safe and delicious agricultural products that meet consumers' ever-rising expectations, while also ensuring that those who farm well and commit to quality earn the returns they deserve. This path of upgrading agricultural products with equal emphasis on both yield and quality must ultimately benefit both the dinner tables of ordinary people and the incomes of farmers.
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