Expert Interpretation ｜ Meet the New Era of Smart Agriculture
Editor’s note:The "14th Five-Year Plan" period is the first five years to take advantage of the situation to start a new journey of building a socialist modern country in an all-round way and March towards the goal of the second century, and it is also the launching period for comprehensively promoting rural revitalization and building a digital China. Recently, the Central Network Information Office, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, the Ministry of Commerce, the General Administration of Market Supervision, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, and the National Rural Revitalization Bureau, together with relevant departments, formulated the Digital Rural Development Action Plan (2022-2025) (hereinafter referred to as the Action Plan). The Action Plan puts forward the development goals, key tasks and safeguard measures of digital villages during the Tenth Five-Year Plan period, and comprehensively deploys the work of digital villages. In order to make the community better understand the main contents of the Action Plan, the Central Network Information Office organized relevant experts and scholars to study and interpret the key tasks of the Action Plan, and jointly promoted the construction of digital villages to a new level.
In today’s era, a new round of industrial revolution characterized by digitalization and intelligence is booming, and a new generation of information technologies such as the Internet of Things, big data and artificial intelligence are accelerating the infiltration and integration with agriculture and rural areas, pushing China’s agriculture to the era of smart agriculture. Recently, 10 departments, including the Central Network Information Office and the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, jointly issued the Digital Rural Development Action Plan (2022-2025) (hereinafter referred to as the Action Plan), clearly proposing the "Smart Agriculture Innovation and Development Action" to accelerate the development of smart agriculture. Developing smart agriculture is an important content of digital village construction, and it is also an urgent need to solve China’s "three rural issues" and build a new international competitive advantage of modern agriculture, which has a significant guiding and promoting role for China’s agricultural modernization and the implementation of rural revitalization strategy.
I. What is smart agriculture?
Smart agriculture is a digital agricultural mode formed by the deep integration of modern information technology and traditional agriculture.On the basis of information technology and advanced equipment, smart agriculture is an agricultural form that realizes accurate perception, intelligent control and intelligent management of production process, and pursues higher resource utilization rate, higher labor productivity and better experience in agriculture.
Smart agriculture is an advanced form of modern agriculture.Smart agriculture, characterized by data, systems and intelligent equipment, is deeply integrated with production factors such as land, animals and plants, and production tools in traditional agriculture, realizing accurate production operations, independent management decisions, and chain-like industrial upgrading, and promoting agriculture to enter a new era of modern agriculture with convenient production, efficient management, and industrial coordination.
Smart agriculture has distinct characteristics of digitalization, systematization and intelligence.According to the field, smart agriculture will form many production types, such as smart planting, smart aquaculture, smart processing industry, etc. According to the application scenario, smart farms, smart greenhouses, smart processing plants and other places will be formed, but no matter which form, it is inseparable from core elements such as big data, advanced systems, intelligent equipment and digital infrastructure. Smart agriculture is a brand-new way of digital industry, which allows machines and systems to actively perceive information, make quantitative decisions, intelligently control and provide personalized services through the deep integration of modern information technology and agriculture.
Second, why should we develop smart agriculture?
In recent years, the CPC Central Committee and the State Council have taken the development of smart agriculture as an important content in major strategic arrangements such as building a digital China and implementing the rural revitalization strategy. In September 2018, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council issued the Rural Revitalization Strategic Plan (2018-2022), proposing to "vigorously develop digital agriculture and implement smart agriculture projects". In May 2019, the Central Office and the State Council issued the "Outline of Digital Rural Development Strategy" and made the strategic deployment of "building science and technology agriculture and smart agriculture". In March, 2021, the 14th Five-year Plan for National Economic and Social Development of People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Outline of Long-term Goals to 2035 clearly pointed out that it is necessary to "accelerate the development of smart agriculture and promote the digital transformation of agricultural production, operation and management services".
Smart agriculture is the commanding height of the world’s modern agricultural development competition, a major strategic measure to reshape China’s modern agriculture, and an important starting point to promote the rapid development of agricultural and rural industries. The Central Network Information Office, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, together with relevant departments, have continuously promoted the development of smart agriculture, constantly defined objectives and deepened contents. To speed up the development of intelligent agriculture, we should deepen our understanding from the current and future aspects.
At present,Intelligent agriculture is an important way to solve the practical problems of agriculture, countryside and farmers. With the improvement of agricultural production level and the deepening of rural reform in China, various risks and structural contradictions are also accumulating. For example, the constraints of agricultural resources and ecological environment are tightening day by day, and the mode of agricultural development needs to be changed urgently; The structural and temporal contradictions between supply and demand of agricultural products have increased; The production cost of agricultural products is high, the input is large, and the agricultural benefit is low and unstable. The application of next-generation information technologies such as Internet of Things, big data and artificial intelligence can achieve accurate control of agricultural production, promote high-quality development of agriculture, and achieve strong agriculture, beautiful countryside and rich farmers.
In the future,Smart agriculture is an effective way to solve the sustainable development of agriculture in the future. There is a serious shortage of young and middle-aged rural laborers in China. The average age of agricultural workers in some provinces is close to 60 years old. If we continue to use traditional production methods, the problem of "who will plant the land" will become more and more prominent. To solve the problems of high labor intensity, low efficiency and low income of farmers in agricultural production, we need to make good use of information technology as a new means. Through the independent operation of the machine and the intelligent decision-making of the system, the tiring farm work is handed over to the machine and the worrying things are handed over to the system to achieve higher output, lower cost and better quality of agricultural products.
Third, how to develop smart agriculture
The construction of smart agriculture is a long-term process, which requires laying a solid foundation, grasping the key points and breaking through the difficulties, so as to form the development road of smart agriculture with China characteristics. The Action Plan puts forward clear deployment and requirements.
Lay a solid digital foundation for smart agriculture.Continue to speed up the construction of information infrastructure, improve the level of network layout in rural areas, coordinate resources such as remote sensing satellites, build an agricultural space-based network, and form an agricultural remote sensing observation capability with routine monitoring and rapid response; Accelerate the construction and application of big data in agriculture and rural areas, based on the results of the third national land survey, accelerate the construction of a national agricultural and rural basic database, and build a "one map" of national agricultural and rural data resources.
Accelerate the technological innovation of smart agriculture.Focus on breaking through the basic technologies, general technologies and key technologies in the field of smart agriculture, advance the layout of cutting-edge technologies, and vigorously carry out investment and innovative research around agricultural special sensors, animal and plant growth and development control models, intelligent equipment and other fields. Strengthen key common technologies such as special sensors, animal and plant growth information acquisition and production control mechanism model, focus on promoting the research and development of intelligent agricultural machinery and equipment using various working environments, promote the integrated research and system demonstration of agricultural machinery and information technology, and strengthen technological innovation of agricultural machinery and equipment. Carry out centralized research and demonstration application, realize independent and controllable technology and seize the commanding heights of agricultural science and technology.
Strengthen the practice of smart agriculture.Build a number of smart farms, smart pastures and smart fishing grounds, promote the integrated application of intelligent perception, intelligent analysis and intelligent control technology and equipment in agricultural production, and promote the pilot of unmanned farms. We will further promote the construction of single-variety big data in the whole industrial chain, improve the ability of data analysis and application, realize the intelligence and unmanned operation of the whole process of farm operation through remote control, semi-automatic control or autonomous control, explore the establishment of linkage mechanism of traceability management, risk early warning and emergency recall, strengthen the construction of standard systems such as big data collection, transmission, storage, sharing and safety, and promote the information supervision of agricultural product quality and safety.
Actively carry out agricultural science and technology information services.Improve the agricultural science and technology information service system, establish and improve the monitoring and early warning system for important agricultural products markets, provide public data services for the government and market entities, support the cultivation of a number of information comprehensive service enterprises for new agricultural business entities and small farmers, guide social entities to carry out socialized agricultural production services with data as the key element, establish and improve the comprehensive information platform for science and technology commissioners, and support them to carry out online guidance and answering questions and exchange work experience.
Fourth, important breakthroughs have been made in promoting smart agriculture
Smart agriculture is a complex and systematic project. Although important progress has been made in irrigation formula fertilization, digital forecasting of pests and diseases, accurate feeding of animals and intelligent agricultural machinery and equipment at home and abroad, there are still many difficulties in the development conditions and technology of smart agriculture. The implementation of "Action Plan" will strongly promote the important breakthrough of China’s smart agriculture.
The first is to break through the key core technology of smart agriculture.Smart agriculture is a mode of production supported by many important conditions such as data, model, software and hardware, all of which need to be based on technological breakthrough. At present, there are still some technical problems in China’s smart agriculture, such as insufficient innovation in basic research and application mode, lack of core agricultural sensors and high-end agricultural intelligent equipment, and lack of intelligent algorithm models and system products. Sensing components and application system software mainly rely on imports, terminal remote control systems, animal and plant models and intelligent decision-making have shortcomings, and there is a lack of technical products specifically aimed at production scenarios and diversified markets of Chinese farmers and small plots, which is difficult to meet the practical needs. The Action Plan puts forward "accelerating the technological innovation of smart agriculture", which points out the direction of tackling the above problems.
The second is to break through the shortcomings of digital infrastructure supporting smart agriculture.Digital infrastructure, including broadband network infrastructure, water, electricity, roads and shed infrastructure after digital integration and upgrading, is the basis for the development of smart agriculture. It is necessary to change the problems of insufficient digital integration of most farms, processing plants and greenhouse facilities, strengthen the construction of rural information infrastructure, promote the digital upgrading of traditional infrastructure, and meet the needs of smart agriculture development. The "digital transformation and upgrading project of rural infrastructure" proposed in the Action Plan is conducive to the intelligent upgrading of rural networks, water conservancy, agricultural product logistics and other infrastructure.
The third is to break through the big data constraints of smart agriculture.Smart agriculture is an agricultural production mode based on advanced data acquisition technologies such as the Internet of Things and sensors, and has a large number of accurate, standardized and real-time data. At present, there are some problems, such as insufficient data acquisition capacity, imperfect data standards, backward means of data collection, transmission, storage and sharing, prominent data chimney phenomenon and obvious barriers to big data sharing. In the application of intelligent analysis, there are many fragmented data and few systematic data, so it is necessary to form a big data foundation which is necessary for the production, operation, management and service of smart agriculture, such as universal and special, dynamic and static, benchmark and real-time. The Action Plan proposes "accelerating the construction of the national agricultural and rural basic database, building a’ one map’ of the national agricultural and rural data resources" and "establishing and improving the monitoring and early warning system of important agricultural products markets", which will effectively solve the big data constraints of smart agriculture.
The fourth is to break through the dilemma of coordinated development of smart agriculture industry chain.Smart agriculture is a systematic project, not just a single application of information science and technology, but the industrial chain is closely related and affects each other. Due to the separation of traditional farming-breeding-adding relationship, the overall efficiency of the whole industrial chain is not high. It is necessary to give full play to the advantages of technology association, information sharing and total factor matching in the whole chain of smart agriculture, fully embody the characteristics of integration and integration in construction and development, promote the development of smart agriculture with high quality and help rural revitalization.(Author: Institute of Agricultural Information, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences)