How can the aquaculture industry integrate into the Agriculture 4.0 era?
With the advancement of science and technology, the Internet of Things and the servitization of manufacturing have ushered in the fourth industrial revolution led by intelligent manufacturing. In 2013, the Hannover Messe in Germany officially proposed the concept of “Industry 4.0”. This is one of the ten future projects defined in the German government's "High-Tech Strategy 2020", aimed at supporting the research, development and innovation of a new generation of revolutionary technologies in the industrial sector.
As both a supplier of raw materials for industrial production and a user of industrial finished products, agriculture will inevitably integrate into this transformation of the era and develop toward the age of intelligent agriculture, namely the Agriculture 4.0 era. As one of the important elements of Agriculture 4.0, the aquaculture industry will also undergo profound changes, and an era of intelligent, networked, refined and convenient aquaculture is approaching.
■ The transition from Agriculture 1.0 to 4.0
Agriculture 4.0 is a modern agricultural form supported and enabled by the Internet of Things, big data, mobile connectivity and cloud computing technologies, namely Intelligent Agriculture, and it is also the product of advancing to a higher stage after traditional agriculture, mechanized agriculture and informatized (automated) agriculture.
Looking at the development history of modern agriculture at home and abroad, it can be divided into four stages: Agriculture 1.0 is an agricultural management model relying on individual physical labor and animal power, in which people mainly rely on experience to judge farming seasons and use simple tools and animal power for cultivation, mainly engaging in production in small-scale individual household units, with a relatively small production scale, relatively backward management and production technology, poor ability to withstand natural disasters, low efficiency of the agro-ecosystem and a relatively weak commodity economy. Agriculture 2.0, namely mechanized agriculture, is a production and management model dominated by mechanized production, using advanced and suitable agricultural machinery to replace human and animal power production tools, improving the agricultural production conditions of “facing the loess with the back to the sky”, transforming the backward and inefficient traditional production mode into an advanced and efficient large-scale production mode, and greatly raising labor productivity and the level of agricultural productivity. As modern information technologies such as computers, electronics and communications, as well as automated equipment, are increasingly applied in agriculture, agriculture will step into the Agriculture 3.0 model. Agriculture 3.0, namely informatized (automated) agriculture, is agriculture mainly characterized by the application of modern information technologies and the automation and intelligentization of partial production operations.
When information technology develops to a new stage, a new agricultural development model, namely Agriculture 4.0, can emerge: intelligent agriculture, a highly intelligent form of agriculture integrating the Internet of Things, cloud computing and big data, whose purpose is to achieve the global optimum of large-scale agricultural production as a whole, with the goals of utilizing various agricultural resources with the highest efficiency, reducing agricultural energy consumption and costs to the greatest extent, protecting the agricultural ecological environment to the greatest extent and achieving the overall optimum of the agricultural system; characterized by the ubiquitous intelligence of the entire agricultural chain, entire industry, entire process and entire region, supported and enabled by Internet of Things technologies such as comprehensive perception, reliable transmission and intelligent processing; and a modern agricultural development model and form of high yield, high efficiency, low consumption, high quality, ecology and safety with automated production, optimized control, intelligent management, systematic logistics and electronic trading as the main production methods.
Agriculture 4.0 in China is still “just showing its tip above the water”, still at the stage of concepts, ideas, design and experimental demonstration: Beijing has focused on carrying out demonstration applications of the agricultural Internet of Things in agricultural water management, environmental regulation and control, and protected agriculture, achieving refined management of agricultural water and environmental monitoring of protected agriculture; Heilongjiang Province has focused on building wireless sensor networks in field crop production, transmitting data and conducting centralized data processing and analysis with the help of the Internet and mobile communication networks to support production decisions; Jiangsu Province has developed a domestically leading integrated intelligent management platform based on the Internet of Things, focusing on exploration in aquaculture and other aspects; Shandong has made obvious progress in advancing the informatization of the overall industry in protected greenhouses and aquaculture; Zhejiang Province has focused on applying Internet of Things technology in protected flowers, with various environmental indicators wirelessly transmitted to microcomputers through sensors, achieving automatic monitoring, transmission and control throughout the entire flower planting process; and the construction of the wheat “four conditions” monitoring project in Anhui Province has already started. In addition, Henan, Chongqing, Liaoning, Inner Mongolia and other places have also carried out some exploratory work.
At the current stage, Agriculture 4.0 in China is mainly focused on the demonstration, promotion and application of Internet of Things technology in various fields and links, and has not yet achieved large-scale, high-level application. With the rapid development of agricultural e-commerce, agricultural product logistics and market-oriented agricultural services, big data, cloud computing and mobile connectivity have also been widely applied and effectively integrated with Internet of Things technology.
■ The current application status of “Agriculture 4.0” in the aquaculture industry
The development of “Agriculture 4.0” takes technologies such as the Internet of Things, big data, cloud computing and mobile connectivity as the key, and breaking through the core technologies and major key technologies involving the agricultural Internet of Things and catering to the development needs of modern agriculture is the only way to move toward “Agriculture 4.0”. At the current stage, the application of “Agriculture 4.0” in the aquaculture industry is mainly reflected in the application of key technologies with the Internet of Things as the core.
The deepened application of “Agriculture 4.0” technologies such as the Internet of Things in the aquaculture field requires a large number of practical talents who understand technology and can apply it. However, aquaculture has always been regarded as an occupation that is arduous, low-paid and poorly evaluated by society. Outdated social prejudice has had a huge impact on the psychology of agricultural colleges and universities, especially students who themselves study aquaculture and their relatives. After graduation, under their own fear and the dissuasion of their families, most of these students have turned to non-frontline breeding positions such as feed marketing, and a considerable proportion have turned to industries completely unrelated to aquaculture, let alone graduates of other majors devoting themselves to this industry. Therefore, when practical talents are insufficient, vigorously upgrading the technical equipment in the industry through “Agriculture 4.0” technologies such as the Internet of Things and playing the “technology card” is the way to better alleviate the dilemma of a shortage of high-quality labor in the aquaculture industry. In the case of high labor costs, large Norwegian farms integrate modern information technology to build an aquaculture Internet of Things platform, achieving full automation of salmon feed feeding, harvesting, net washing and processing, so that with only regular maintenance, 1 to 2 people can manage all affairs of the entire farm. This virtuous operating aquaculture model is worth learning from.
For a long time, as a traditional breeding method in China, aquaculture based on the transformation of resources such as low-lying saline-alkali land and barren beaches and waters has mature technology, simple operation and moderate investment, and is suitable for the economic development level of rural China where farmers operate under contract. However, it has a long cycle, high labor intensity, low production efficiency, high breeding risks and serious water pollution. Therefore, reducing labor intensity, improving production efficiency, lowering breeding risks and achieving ecological aquaculture have been the dream of fishermen for many years, and are also an inevitable requirement for fishery modernization in the new era. Through “Agriculture 4.0” technologies such as the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence systems are combined with related instruments, meters and equipment, and computer control is used to achieve automated management of aquaculture operations such as water quality monitoring, aeration, feeding and harvesting, as well as transportation, processing, storage and logistics, reducing the input of manpower and material resources and also reducing losses caused by human experience errors. At the same time, through the union of aquaculture farmers, various industry associations and aquaculture organizations have emerged, forming cluster effects and scale effects, which has transformed the development model of aquaculture.
At present, the development of China's aquaculture industry is at a new historical stage. In particular, deepening the structural adjustment of the aquaculture industry, steadily increasing farmers' incomes and improving the market competitiveness of aquatic products make the requirement to advance the informatization of the aquaculture industry more urgent than ever before. Vigorously advancing aquaculture informatization and using informatization to drive the modernization of China's aquaculture industry is of great significance for promoting the development of agriculture and the aquaculture industry and improving the quality of life of fishermen.