To transform the development mode, the document calls for deepening agricultural restructuring, raising the quality and safety levels of agricultural products, strengthening the role of science and technological innovation, and innovating the circulation patterns of farm produce.

China's current way of cultivation has over-exploited the fertility of the farmland and the unsustainable mode is coming to an end, said Zhu.

The second major task is to boost farmers' income.

China will increase investment in the agriculture sector and the countryside, boost the effectiveness of agricultural subsidy policies, improve the pricing mechanism for farm produce and enhance supporting services, said the document.

"These measures will further activate rural resources and help farmers to increase their income," said Dang Guoying, a senior researcher with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS).

The third task is to accelerate the building of new socialist countryside.

The government will boost rural infrastructure building, raise public service levels in rural areas, improve rural environment, and encourage more social capital investment in rural development.

The introduction of social capital will play an important role, said CASS researcher Li Guoxiang.

The fourth major task is to deepen rural reforms.

More efforts will be made to establish a new-style agricultural management system, accelerate reforms of rural collective property rights system, steadily push forward pilot reforms of rural land system, carry out rural financial system reforms, and deepen water conservancy and forestry reforms.

It urged guiding land management rights to flow in an orderly way and raising the scale of agricultural production.

Rural reforms will reinvigorate the countryside by awakening the "sleeping" resources like farmland and capital and making them flow in an orderly and reasonable manner, said Ye Xingqing, a researcher with the Development Research Center of the State Council.

Fifthly, The document calls for improving agricultural and rural legal system to strengthen the rule of law in dealing with issues such as protection of rural property rights, regulation of rural market and rural reforms.

The document for the first time noted the importance of rule of law and it is the strengthened rule of law that will ensure rural reforms be carried out smoothly, said Zheng Fengtian, an agriculture professor at Renmin University of China.