China taps AI to supercharge “transformation of agri-food systems”
Just days before President Xi Jinping departed for this week’s high-profile meetings with President Trump and leading AI executives, Chinese officials gathered in Beijing to forge consensus on their ambitious plans for a “green and healthy transformation of agri-food systems.”
The meeting took place at the World Agri-Food Innovation (WAFI) summit in Beijing’s verdant Pinggu District, where hundreds of researchers and policymakers congregated for a series of panels and presentations, including keynote addresses by GFI Founder and President Bruce Friedrich and GFI APAC CEO Mirte Gosker.
GFI APAC’s Mirte Gosker outlined how China’s proven clean-tech playbook can accelerate protein diversification
At the summit’s conclusion, government officials published a declaration of six key objectives agreed upon by participants—called “The Pinggu Consensus.”
What were the six key objectives?
- Reduce food waste: “Deepen innovation in resource-circulation models, with a focus on reducing food loss across the entire value chain; advance the resource recovery and conversion of waste in tandem with reductions in food loss, thereby strengthening the foundations of food security and sustainable development.”
- Leverage AI: “Use artificial intelligence to reshape the global agricultural landscape by building a digital application system, strengthening data foundations, and leveraging multi-stakeholder collaboration to make technology broadly accessible, thereby leading the transition towards efficient, green, resilient, and inclusive agri-food systems.”
- Strict control of inputs: “Guided by the requirements of food security and climate action, advance the green transformation of agriculture by strictly controlling resource inputs, protecting the ecology of cultivated land, and mobilising diverse stakeholders, so as to promote coordinated progress in agricultural production, ecological protection, and farmers’ income growth.”
- Strengthen R&D: “Use the high-quality development of agri-food systems as a key lever to strengthen scientific research and technological capabilities in nutrition, improve standards and policies, reinforce industry coordination and consumer guidance, and promote mutually reinforcing progress between industrial upgrading and improved nutrition for the entire population.”
- International collaboration: “Strengthen South-South Cooperation in agriculture [editorial note: This refers to the Global South, not geographic], accelerate the dissemination and adoption of advanced technologies and innovative models, and support the international expansion of the ‘Science and Technology Backyard’ initiative, enabling scientific research capacity to take root at the grassroots level and using the integration of industry and education to support the development of sustainable global agri-food systems.”
- High-level policy coordination: “Harness high-level policy dialogue to build consensus, bring together multiple stakeholders, and strengthen communication and coordination on key agricultural issues; promote alignment between development strategies and the sharing of experience, and translate policy consensus into practical action.”
Cultivated kung pao chicken, courtesy of the China Meat Research Center
What does this mean for alt proteins?
Chinese political documents are famously high-context, so understanding their real-world implications sometimes requires additional explanation. Let’s zoom in on a few key phrases:
“Use artificial intelligence to reshape the global agricultural landscape”: China believes that their country’s prolific integration of artificial intelligence into industrial manufacturing gives them a leg up on scaling production of “new proteins.” Influential philanthropies like the Bezos Earth Fund have also championed AI’s uncanny ability to discover new ingredients, enhance sensory profiles, and shorten commercialisation timelines, which recently prompted them to fund a multimillion-dollar Food Intelligence Lab focused on creating better-tasting plant-based meat. Expect China to lean heavily on domestic food manufacturers to more deeply integrate AI into their R&D and production systems, as a means of accelerating development of novel proteins that can match the taste and price of conventional animal counterparts.
Plant-based meat dumplings, courtesy of Herotein
“Strictly controlling resource inputs”: Food systems are not just about the end products consumers find at the market. There is a vast ecosystem of natural resources that make those end products possible, from land and water usage to the soy and corn used for agricultural feed. Since farmed animals need to eat and drink too, conventional animal agriculture guzzles these ecological “inputs” on a colossal scale, squandering finite resources and diminishing overall production volumes. China correctly sees this inefficiency as a fundamental barrier to making “coordinated progress” towards satisfying rising meat demand and understands that “new proteins,” such as plant-based and cultivated meat, could empower farmers and manufacturers to make more from less by cutting hungry animals out of the equation.
And perhaps most importantly, “Harness high-level policy dialogue”: China’s leaders take the time to solicit input from leading domestic and international experts when creating their industrial roadmaps—but once those plans are agreed upon, they cascade top-down like a waterfall. All of the most important national policy decisions (or “development strategies”) are decided in Beijing, where WAFI took place, and then directives are shared with other national offices, as well as provincial and city government officials, to facilitate “alignment” and implementation.
By publicly disseminating The Pinggu Consensus, Beijing is signalling to food industry stakeholders and policymakers across the country that they can and should do their part to “translate policy consensus into practical action.” That work, no doubt, has already begun.
Onwards,
Ryan Huling
Senior Writer | GFI APAC