China Unveils Two-Year Multi-Agency Push to Safeguard Farm Brands

Three Chinese government agencies have jointly launched a campaign to protect agricultural brands from 2026 to 2027. The plan focuses on four priorities: tightening product quality and safety enforcement at source, cracking down on trademark and patent violations—particularly across live-streaming e-commerce—penalizing unfair competition such as misleading packaging, and strengthening administrative intellectual property services for rural producers. The initiative aims to build a comprehensive oversight chain spanning brand creation, management, commercial use, and market promotion.

Agricultural brands and geographical indications are vital instruments for boosting farming incomes and driving rural development. However, brand owners frequently struggle with counterfeit goods, trademark squatting, and deceptive marketing in rapidly growing live-streaming e-commerce channels. By coordinating farm-level production checks with national market enforcement and intellectual property authorities, the campaign seeks to rebuild consumer trust, curb bad-faith competition, and protect legitimate agricultural enterprises.

Three Chinese central departments have jointly rolled out an enforcement action plan to protect agricultural brands, establishing an end-to-end supervision mechanism that spans brand cultivation, management, commercial use, and market promotion through 2027. According to state media reports, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, the State Administration for Market Regulation, and the China National Intellectual Property Administration released the Agricultural Brand Protection Special Action Implementation Plan (2026–2027). The campaign is structured around four primary tasks designed to restore consumer confidence and safeguard the commercial value of agricultural goods. First, regulators plan to intensify quality and safety supervision for branded agricultural goods. This includes the comprehensive enforcement of commitment-based conformity certificates for edible agricultural products, establishing notification and joint-investigation mechanisms for non-compliant goods, and applying categorized supervision at the point of origin. Second, the authorities are targeting intellectual property infringements involving agricultural trademarks, patents, and geographical indications. Enforcement will place special emphasis on online retail and live-streaming e-commerce, two channels where counterfeit agricultural goods and misleading origin claims have expanded rapidly. Regulators will also penalize bad-faith trademark squatting and actions that infringe upon well-known trademarks and time-honored enterprise marks. Third, the plan directs market regulators to curb unfair competition. Priority targets include the unauthorized use of names, packaging, or decorative trade dress that resemble recognized regional public brands or geographical indications to cause consumer confusion. The campaign will also target commercial defamation and false or misleading advertising regarding product performance, functional qualities, sales records, customer reviews, or past awards. Finally, the initiative seeks to bolster administrative intellectual property support for agricultural entities. The government plans to guide agricultural producers in securing multi-dimensional protections across trademarks, patents, geographical indications, and new plant varieties. In addition, public intellectual property service institutions will be directed to assist key agricultural industries by offering specialized non-profit services, including rights-protection counseling, infringement determination, and dispute mediation.