Abstract: In the context of agricultural modernization, accelerating the development of smart agriculture as a key task holds significant importance for securing a leading position in the global agricultural landscape. This paper adopted a policy text analysis perspective to systematically trace the evolution of China’ s smart agriculture policies, identify core themes and underlying patterns, reveal current policy hotspots, trends, and existing shortcomings, and subsequently propose policy recommendations to improve the relevant policy framework. The study found that, policy evolution exhibited a “central government-led, local government-followed” characteristic, with smart agriculture policies covering a broad range of themes, forming a clear-layered, systematic policy framework. In recent years, smart agriculture had achieved significant results in promoting industrial integration and upgrading, improving agricultural production efficiency, and supporting rural revitalization, with vast development potential. However, its development faced multi-dimensional challenges such as technological bottlenecks, talent shortages, and data governance, necessitating the dynamic optimization and precise adaptation of the policy system to provide effective support for the high-quality development of smart agriculture. To this end, policy optimization recommendations are proposed from four aspects: strengthening central-local coordination mechanisms, establishing a diversified talent cultivation system, deepening the integration of smart agriculture and digital rural governance, and intensifying core technology research and application. These recommendations aim to provide theoretical foundations and practical pathways for improving China’ s smart agriculture policy framework.