Construction process and development trend of ecological agriculture in China

China's ecological agriculture has played a pioneering role in sustainable development, which has attracted extensive attention and high praise from the international community. This paper systematically analyzed the development process of China's eco-agriculture, by combining with the practice of ecological agriculture construction in China for many years and the construction process of modern ecological agriculture base of the Ministry of Agriculture, and comprehensive literature research. The results showed that: 1) The development of China's eco-agriculture has gone through two periods: traditional ecological agriculture and modern ecological agriculture. Traditional ecological agriculture provides rich production experience. China's modern agricultural ecology has experienced four development stages: initial exploration (1981–1992), expansion and consolidation (1993–2004), steady advancement (2005–2011) and innovation and promotion (2012–present). Each stage has distinctive features and landmark achievements, which rammed the foundation for the green and sustainable development of agriculture and rural areas in China; 2) China's modern ecological agriculture has been incorporated into the act of government in 1993, and has basically formed a five-level demonstration and driving system of ecological agriculture including 2 pilot provinces for eco-agriculture, 10 demonstration cities for circular agriculture, 100 demonstration counties for eco-agriculture, 12 demonstration bases for eco-agriculture, and 1100 beautiful villages, which cover province, municipality, county, base and village. The advancing mechanism of modern ecological agriculture of “small circulation in the main body, circulation in the park and large circulation in the county”, has effectively promoted the development of ecological agriculture nationwide; 3) China's eco-agriculture has three distinct characteristics: comprehensiveness, sustainability and diversity. Its basic contents mainly include: agricultural ecology methodology and theoretical basis, optimization design of agricultural ecosystem, assembly and integrated application of eco-agricultural technology; 4) Under the trend of agricultural green development, China's eco-agriculture construction is innovating and improving system and mechanism, and ensuring the development towards high efficiency, industrialization, standardization, practicality and multi-function, thus gradually establishing a resource-saving, environment-friendly and ecological conservation-oriented modern ecological agricultural system with Chinese characteristics, constituting the ecological agriculture development pattern integrating rural production development, prosperous life and good ecology, and helping China's rural ecological revitalization.