Abstract: [Purpose/Significance] The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs of China and the agricultural administrative departments of various provinces play a major role in promoting agricultural and rural big data development. This paper aims to learn, analyze and evaluate the data publishing, sharing, standardization and applications by investigating the open governmental agricultural data in 31 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities in the mainland of China, and propose suggestions for improvement accordingly. [Method/Process] We investigated the open government platforms built by 31 provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities), sorted out the content published in these platforms, and standardized and summarized the investigation data. We made an analysis based on the update time of data, license of data applications, and download of data. Meanwhile, combined with FAIR data principles, we evaluated the data from the findability, accessibility, interoperability and reuse of the data.[Results/Conclusions] At present, the management, publishing and sharing of agricultural data in China is at an elementary stage. Although various governments formulated regulations and policies, the implementation of these regulations and policies is unsatisfactory. The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs of China should join hands with the agricultural administrative departments of various provinces to promote the opening and use of government agricultural data. Meanwhile, they should be in line with the construction mode of the international open government data and improve their capabilities in data publishing, management and services.

Key words: open government data, agriculture big data, intelligent agriculture, scientific data