China will encourage industrial and commercial enterprises to be active in the agricultural sector to accelerate its development, senior officials said on Friday.

Such enterprises will be supported in helping farmers in several areas, such as the supply of agricultural machinery and processing and marketing of agricultural products, said Chen Xiwen, director of the Office of the Communist Party of China Central Committee's Leading Group on Rural Work.

Investments in facility agriculture and large-scale animal husbandry are also being encouraged as enterprises always have strong finances and technological superiority to ordinary farmers, he said.