Advancing "Internet Plus Agriculture" is not about "making bonsai"
The “13th Five-Year Plan” recommendations propose advancing agricultural standardization and informatization. At present, the flourishing “Internet Plus Agriculture” across various regions has injected fresh vitality and vigorous momentum into agricultural informatization, and the bright prospects of smart agriculture and data-driven agriculture have already emerged.
The all-round penetration of internet technology into agriculture has provided a major historical opportunity for our country to accelerate the pace of agricultural modernization. For historical reasons, our country missed the first two industrial revolutions and lost the favorable opportunity for modernization. Since the reform and opening up, although our country's modern agriculture has made some achievements in mechanization, chemicalization, and industrialization, it still generally lags behind developed agricultural economies such as the United States, Japan, and Europe by several decades. Today, the flourishing “Internet Plus Agriculture” is expected to become a catalyst for agricultural informatization, offering the possibility for Chinese agriculture to board the historical train of the third industrial revolution, characterized by the internet and information technology, and to overtake developed countries' modern agriculture on the curve.
⟦NL> But it must be recognized that “Internet Plus Agriculture” is not something that can be “added and done” simply by the government and enterprises running a network cable to farming households. Some current Internet Plus Agriculture projects have a certain government flavor and “bonsai” characteristics. For most farming households, embedding internet technology into agricultural production, circulation, sales, and other links faces problems such as lagging technology, lack of infrastructure, shortage of talent, and shortage of funds. In addition, Internet Plus Agriculture is premised on agricultural informatization, mechanization, and marketization. At present, the level of agricultural modernization in many regions of our country is still relatively low, and overall promotion will take time.
Advancing “Internet Plus Agriculture” is not “making bonsai.” Looking ahead to the “13th Five-Year Plan,” “Internet Plus Agriculture” still has a long way to go. To turn “bonsai” into “scenery,” first, top-level design must be done well, and the overall development plan and roadmap for our country's “Internet Plus Agriculture” must be studied and formulated, clarifying the strategic goals, main tasks, implementation priorities, key technologies, and safeguard measures at different stages, and coordinating the resolution of major issues faced in the development of “Internet Plus Agriculture.”
To turn “bonsai” into “scenery,” specific path planning must also be done well. In the circulation link, in areas where infrastructure such as logistics develops relatively well, rural e-commerce can be vigorously promoted; in the production and breeding links, the currently widespread problems are excessively high costs and overly expensive equipment. Before IoT technology achieves mass production, promotion can first start with facility agriculture that has relatively good economic returns, and key technologies such as soil testing and formulated fertilization and unified prevention and control can be used first.
To turn “bonsai” into “scenery,” the bottleneck problems of development must also be solved. At present, technology and funds are the main obstacles hindering Internet agriculture from becoming bigger and stronger. This requires increasing fiscal, tax, and financial support for Internet agriculture enterprises at the national level, so that “Internet Plus Agriculture” has people to do it and money to do it, and so that the internet becomes an important force driving agricultural modernization.