Digital agriculture offers far‐reaching opportunities for accelerating agricultural transformation. Based on empirical evidence and guided by economic theory, this study shows that digital agriculture is driven by private firms, including established input firms and global software firms and start‐ups that are new to agriculture. Although there are concerns that digital agriculture will enhance the market power of large agribusiness enterprises and increase the digital divide, a combination of new actors and public action can help accelerate the supply of digital agricultural technology, manage threats of market concentration, and harness the opportunities of digital agriculture for all.

China is one of the biggest consumers of genetically modified (GM) products, importing maize, soybeans and canola, and producing GM cotton. The cultivation of GM food crop, however, is still not permitted. Many studies argue that consumers’ attitude toward GM food safety is a major barrier to GM food crop production in China. Recent studies suggest that special interest groups such as biotechnology scientists with an economic interest in biotechnology are more supportive of the technology than groups with nothing to gain. Others believe that agribusiness groups influence the debate about GM food production. This is the first study that examined agribusiness managers’ attitudes toward GM biosafety and their support for GM crop production. The sample was 160 firms in the seed, pesticide, feed and food processing industries. We found most agribusiness leaders are concerned about GM food consumption and oppose GM crop production. Using regression models, we found business managers’ attitudes toward GM crop cultivation are more supportive if they expect to profit, if they are already using GM crops in their firm or are doing research on GM crops.

Purpose: Economic interest groups such as seed, pesticide, feed, and food companies play an important role in supporting or preventing the production of genetically modified (GM) crops. The purpose of this paper is to examine firm managers’ attitudes toward GM technology, biotechnology R&D investment, and political lobbying activities. Design/methodology/approach: Using data from surveys of 160 managers in the food, feed, chemical, and seed industries in 2013-2014, this paper employed three probit models to examine the determinants of managers’ attitudes, biotechnology R&D investment, and lobbying activities. Findings: The results show that most Chinese agribusiness managers are concerned about GM foods and oppose its adoption. Nevertheless, one-third of the firms invest in biotechnology R&D and less than 15 percent of managers lobbied the government to change biotechnology policies. The econometric estimation results suggest that profit change expectation is the main factor affecting managers’ attitudes and biotechnology R&D investment decisions, whereas lobbying activities are significantly influenced by their attitudes and biotechnology R&D investment. In addition, managers’ attitudes toward GM foods also significantly influence firms’ decisions to invest in biotechnology R&D. Originality/value: This paper has improved on previous research in two ways. First, it analyses the determinants of agribusiness firm managers’ attitudes toward GM technology, biotechnology R&D investment, and lobbying activities. Second, the methodology involves an analysis of agribusiness firm survey data in the food, feed, chemical, and seed industries, which is the first time to use such data to research on economic interest group in agricultural biotechnology field.

China’s pesticide industry has played an important role in the growth of agricultural productivity in both China and worldwide, but its development is hampered by production inefficiency and the lack of innovation of active ingredients. To improve innovation and the productivity of the pesticide industry, the Chinese government has implemented a series of policies to stimulate private research and development (R&D) and firm innovation. Using the firm-level panel data of the Annual Survey of Industrial Firms (ASIF) collected by the National Bureau of Statistics in 2001–2007, this study examines the linkages between R&D investment, innovation, and productivity with a focus on the role of government policies. The results show that pesticide firms with a higher intensity of R&D investment were associated with a higher patent intensity, and more innovated firms were associated with a higher productivity. Public research, intellectual property enforcement, production subsidy, foreign direct investment (FDI), and being export oriented were positively associated with the innovation and productivity of pesticide firms.