In 5 years, the agricultural internet will become a pillar industry of China's economy

In this year's Central Document No. 1, a very important statement was mentioned: For China to be strong, agriculture must be strong. This gives us a question to think about: How can China's agriculture become strong?

For intelligent agriculture integrated with the internet, where should we start?

You should know that the reason China's agriculture is not strong enough is concentrated in one word: poor, and the main reason for this poverty is that productivity has again encountered a development bottleneck: the 1.0 model smallholder system restricts the development of productivity.

The current productivity is built on the household land contract responsibility system, a 1.0 operating model that relies on individual manual labor. More than 30 years ago, it indeed played a positive role. With the development of agricultural modernization, large-scale mechanized farms have also appeared in China, entering the 2.0 model. However, developed countries abroad have already evolved from highly automated, mechanized, precision production models to the 4.0 model of highly intelligent integration with the internet. Domestically, whether the 1.0 or 2.0 model, there is simply no way to compete with them.

The 1.0 model smallholder system has also "created" a drawback: the agricultural circulation system is underdeveloped. "A Bite of China" shows us a strange phenomenon: the better the agricultural products, the more they stay in remote mountains and villages, where there is no pollution, but there are not many sales channels; the more popular ones, which can be bought at arm's length in farmers' markets or supermarkets, more or less have quality and safety problems, either excessive fertilizer or pesticide residues, or expired and spoiled goods. The 1.0 model objectively suppresses the efficiency of the agricultural industry chain. The production, sales, processing, transportation and other industrial links of agriculture are in a fragmented and dispersed state, greatly reducing the efficiency of agricultural circulation and suppressing the potential for agricultural income growth.

If agriculture is to completely take off the "poor" hat, it is necessary to start from the source, break through the bottleneck of productivity, and stimulate agricultural vitality. Where should we start? I believe that with the deepening of the land transfer system, agriculture must undergo cross-sector integration with the internet to realize a productivity revolution from agriculture 1.0 and 2.0 to agriculture 3.0 and 4.0. Simply put, land must be moderately concentrated and the agricultural internet revolution must be embraced.

What are the two major areas of the agricultural internet revolution?

Judging from developed countries around the world, this revolution is already taking place in two areas.

1. Revolution in the production field: agricultural production adopts IOT technology to achieve precision production

A friend in the United States told me that 80% of large farms in the United States have already popularized agricultural IOT technology. Through highly automated large-scale agricultural machinery and facilities, farm owners can complete the management and corn harvesting of 10,000 acres of land with 3 people, with efficiency surpassing human labor. Why is it so developed?

Tracing history, it can be found that as early as the 1980s the United States proposed the concept of precision agriculture. In the early 1990s, the global positioning system was applied to the field of agricultural production. With the rapid spread of information technology, American agricultural IoT made considerable progress. Globally, the United States is in a leading position in using IoT technology to promote intelligent and precision agriculture.

Lance Donny, founder of the American agricultural software company OnFarm, once revealed that the adoption rate of IoT equipment technology by large American farms is as high as 80%; it is expected that by 2020, the average American farm will have 50 connected devices. China lags far behind the United States. We began trying pilot agricultural IoT projects in 2011 under government promotion.

2. Revolution in the circulation field: agricultural circulation adopts e-commerce technology to innovate the agricultural circulation model

As early as the 1980s, the United States began trying agricultural EDI e-commerce. With the commercialization wave of the internet in the 1990s, agricultural product e-commerce emerged strongly. The internet covering the globe has brought greater and greater economic benefits to agricultural business entities, greatly helping the transformation of American agricultural business benefits. China's development is relatively lagging, but its growth space and speed are in no way inferior.

If we think further about the modern agriculture situation abroad, it is easy to discover one point: due to the strong penetration of the internet gene, the three elements of agricultural productivity: laborers, labor tools and objects of labor have all undergone fundamental changes.

From the perspective of labor, those standing in the fields are no longer traditional farmers facing the loess with their backs to the sky, but new internet farmers. Many of them are white-collar elites and social backbone talents, mastering advanced knowledge and technology, with companies as the main body, possessing modern business concepts, and fully participating in the production and business activities of agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry and fishery industries.

From the perspective of labor tools, what operates on the soil is no longer traditional farm tools and machinery, but automated equipment and machinery connected through IOT technology. Agricultural IOT is an extension and expansion of the internet. Its core and foundation is still the internet, except that the user end for information exchange has been extended through sensors to soil, atmosphere, microorganisms, chemical substances and automated machinery, and is managed and operated through network systems.

From the perspective of the objects of labor, the current "scattered" land system does not meet the requirements of IOT technology production and must be concentrated for large-scale operation; and the results of land production are no longer ordinary agricultural products with excessive chemical fertilizers and pesticides, but more pollution-free products that are closer to nature with improved quality and increased yield.

The three elements of agricultural productivity have already completely changed. Does this not indicate that a profound revolution is about to arrive?

Who launched this revolution?

In addition to the objective factor of technological progress, there are two internal driving forces behind this revolution:

One force comes from the government's top-level design

The government has already regarded the internet as an important way to solve agricultural problems and is using the internet to "force" an agricultural revolution. Interpreting the agricultural documents of recent years, including the Central Document No. 1 over the years as well as policies, regulations, plans and opinions formulated by the State Council, various departments and local governments, it can be found that in top-level design, the importance of the internet to agricultural development has clearly increased.

From developing modern logistics, large-scale operation, e-commerce, agricultural informatization, agricultural scientific and technological innovation, and agricultural comprehensive service platform construction projects, to bringing information services into villages and households, and then to information sharing and interconnection, all depend on the development of the agricultural internet. Therefore, policy dividends related to the agricultural internet show an increasing trend. In 2015, Document No. 1 sent an even clearer signal: "For China to be strong, agriculture must be strong." Agriculture has been given the political mission of strengthening the nation, and therefore the future prospects of the agricultural internet are even broader.

Another force comes from the internet industry

Favorable policies have spawned a large number of emerging online technology enterprises investing in the agricultural field, and the trend of internet integration with agriculture is intensifying.

In addition, driven by huge policy dividends, internet enterprises are actively promoting the development of the agricultural internet. A large number of emerging enterprises have emerged in the industry, including agricultural IoT system research and integration, agricultural intelligent machinery manufacturing, agricultural product traceability management and agricultural product e-commerce, and so on.

Revolutionary activity in the e-commerce field is especially active. Promoted by internet giant enterprises, the two-way circulation system of "consumer goods going to the countryside, agricultural products entering the city" is gradually taking shape. The internet is breaking through the second shackle hindering the development of productivity. Companies such as Alibaba, JD.com and Suning provide capital, technology and talent and are putting "e-commerce going to the countryside" into action. Relying on their existing corporate resources and advantages, they cooperate with the government and local enterprises, establish operating systems in counties and villages, improve rural distribution systems by investing in the construction of rural information service stations, activate the rural e-commerce ecosystem, and innovate rural purchasing agency services, thereby promoting higher incomes and more employment for farmers.

Is there really any value in farmers who have never touched a computer coming into contact with the internet?

A research group from the Ministry of Agriculture answered this question with survey results from 1,072 farmer households in six provinces. The research group found that exposure to the internet significantly increases household agricultural operating income. Among them, in the western and central regions, the surveyed farmer households in villages with internet information had agricultural operating incomes 21.9% and 18.3% higher respectively than those without internet information, a more notable effect than that of information service stations in the eastern region.

The revolution already has the conditions to spread like a prairie fire. Zhang Xiaorong mentioned in a speech on the "See the Dragon in the Field: 2015 Agricultural Internet Development Research" report released at the Smart Agriculture Forum that this cross-sector revolution is in its embryonic stage and urgently needs the support of industrial capital.

At present in China, agriculture 1.0, agriculture 2.0 and agriculture 3.0 coexist at the same time, leaving huge room for transformation. There is a market space of trillions for transforming production with agricultural IOT technology; for agricultural product e-commerce, the market space also reaches the trillion level.

For the internet and for Chinese agriculture, this is an enormous positive. At present, the agricultural internet is strong in the e-commerce field. In 2015, agricultural product e-commerce is expected to show explosive growth, and agricultural product e-commerce may fire the first shot of the revolution. In 5 years, the pillar industry of China's economy will no longer be real estate, but the agricultural internet.