Abstract: Characteristic plateau agriculture has become a development direction of agriculture in Yunnan province, but the one is confronted with thechallenges from efficiency competition in the tide of globalization and the past and future crises of environmental deterioration. Reflection on traditional development modeleads to exploration of countermeasures for the above challenges from two aspects of technology and culture. Development of characteristic plateau agriculture in Yunnan provincehas to undertake double missions to improve economic efficiency and ecological efficiency. This article proposes the two ways of technology-priority and culture-priority and their combination so as to develop characteristic plateau agriculture basing on the ecological advantage and the profound farming culture in Yunnan province.