Abstract: Green development of agriculture is a fundamental requirement for transforming the agricultural development mode and promoting high-quality agricultural development. It is important to strengthen the research on green development of agriculture and construct an evaluation index system to achieve substantial progress in green development of agriculture. This paper applies the grounded theory to code the national-level policy texts on the interpretation of agricultural green development during 2015−2021, and outlines the realistic problems, practical means, and development goals to be addressed by agricultural green development in order to define the connotation of agricultural green development. It further refines a universally applicable index system for evaluation agricultural green development and measurement analysis of China's agricultural green development index from 2016 to 2020. The study found that the average level of green agricultural development in China from 2016 to 2020 is not high, and the rapid development during 2018-2020 has reached a good level. In the future, industrial integration development, agricultural technology research and development, cultivated land resources and biodiversity protection are important concerns of green agricultural development.