Agriculture was and still is one of the key economic sectors in Dehong Prefecture. After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, Dehong was positioned as the grain barn of Yunnan Province, and took the opportunity to promote water conservation, field reorganization, and scientific planting in the countryside. By the end of 2000, Dehong had over 1,800,000 mu of arable land, of which 700,000 mu were devoted to sugar canes, an important cash crop in this area. In the same year, the annual gross agriculture product of Dehong Prefecture reached 1.87 billion yuan.

From 2000 to 2005, Dehong made an effort to optimize the layout of its agriculture and to enhance the reform on agricultural taxes and fees. In 2005, the gross agriculture product of Dehong amounted to 2.721 billion yuan. There were 1,848 large and media-sized tractors, 33,344 small tractors, 559 harvest machines, 2,186 threshers used by large farms and individual farmers. During the whole year, the prefectural government exempted 10.96 million yuan of agricultural taxes, and paid 11.71 million yuan to purchase grains and seeds from farmers. 17,718 people were sent to other provinces in China as agricultural laborers, and generated an annual income of 23.26 million yuan. Farmers were encouraged to grow cash crops such as lemon, coffee, the Australian nut and bamboo which are materials for various processing industries.

A number of enterprises have come to Dehong to invest in agriculture and related industries. The local government is promoting an "enterprise—production base—households" model in the Prefecture, where farmers are hired and paid by agriculture enterprises. Dehong also seeks cooperation opportunities with agricultural research institutions in other provinces and even other countries. Dehong has already carried out a number of cooperation projects such as the "China-European Water Buffalo Project".