Abstract: Recreational agriculture has a trend of fast development in China. The paper suggested that recreational agriculture was a combination of leisure behavior and agriculture and it belonged to leisure industry. The internal factors in the development of recreational agriculture in China were change of agricultural structure and rational return of social concepts, while the external factors were support from government, increase of leisure time, growth of income and convenience of traffic. The recreational agriculture in Shanghai is facing challenges of regional competition and industry competition. Further integration with the second and tertiary industry was suggested to further develop recreational industry.