How can smart agriculture be vigorously developed? Demand orientation is key
On December 13, the Second China Agricultural Valley Forum was held in Qujialing Management District, Jingmen City, Hubei Province. More than ten experts and scholars from China Agricultural University, the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Huazhong Agricultural University, the Hubei Academy of Social Sciences and other universities and research institutes conducted in-depth discussions and exchanges on the theme of how to advance China's agricultural informatization and develop smart agriculture. The experts and scholars believed that smart agriculture has broad prospects for development, that research on IoT technology for smart agriculture should be strengthened, that support for smart agriculture should be increased, and that demand-oriented smart agriculture should be vigorously developed.
He Liyuan, a professor at the College of Resources and Environment of Huazhong Agricultural University, conducted an in-depth analysis of the main factors restricting the development of smart agriculture in China. He said that in recent years, led by the rapid development of hardware, software and communication technologies, and driven by national policies for economic structural transformation, smart agriculture supported by the Internet of Things has developed rapidly. Smart agriculture can accelerate the process of agricultural modernization, but there are some problems in its specific implementation: first, the profit levels and return on investment vary greatly among industries; second, basic information and its supporting system lack guarantees; third, the level of productivity development and advanced technology must adapt to each other in order to develop in a coordinated way, and it is not the case that the more advanced the technology, the higher the benefit. He believed that for smart agriculture to develop sustainably and healthily and become the soul of agricultural production, the key is to have appropriate economic returns, so that it can be advanced step by step and eventually form a situation of coordinated development with agricultural industrialization, and only then can smart agriculture be actively accepted by agriculture and promoted and applied on a large scale. He also proposed that, given the lack of key sensor types, strengthening the collection of basic information from within agriculture is a prerequisite for implementing smart agriculture; otherwise, after the project is implemented, the beneficiaries will only be the project contractors and equipment manufacturers.
Ma Caixue, director of the Department of Information Management at Huazhong Agricultural University, proposed mobilizing forces from various sectors to participate in the development of smart agriculture. He believed that the construction of the agricultural and animal husbandry Internet of Things and the development of the IoT industry provide unprecedented opportunities for realizing the informatization and industrialization of agriculture and animal husbandry, but that agricultural IoT technology, as a high-tech agricultural technology, has the characteristics of a weak foundation, large one-time investment, broad benefits and strong public welfare, and that the government urgently needs to increase investment, and the government should play a leading role in the construction of "smart agriculture" IoT technology. Social forces such as research institutes, universities, telecom operators and information technology enterprises should be encouraged to participate in agricultural IoT projects, creating an agricultural IoT application development model led by the government, with government-enterprise interaction, market operation and win-win cooperation, so as to achieve comprehensive development of the agricultural Internet of Things. At present, the construction of expert systems is a bottleneck in all aspects of smart agriculture development and needs attention from relevant departments.
Liang Xiaoqing, director of the China Agricultural Valley Development Research Center, introduced at the forum the situation of the core area of Hubei Province's provincial strategy "China Agricultural Valley" - the Qujialing Management District of Jingmen City, Hubei Province - actively exploring a path of "modern agriculture demonstration zone, farming culture exhibition zone, agricultural eco-tourism zone, agricultural product production and processing cluster zone", the "four zones" path of modern agriculture, and accelerating the construction of a "smart agricultural valley". At the same time, based on years of practice, he offered his own thoughts on advancing agricultural informatization. He believed that at present the driving force for agricultural informatization in many places is basically supply-driven, that there is a tendency to worship technology as a fetish, and that in some places policy design and scientific research are out of step with farmers' demands. He proposed developing demand-oriented agricultural informatization, and said that at present particular attention should be paid to meeting the informatization needs of the three major new types of production and operation entities: large specialized households, family farms and farmer cooperatives. The ultimate purpose of agricultural informatization must act on the production process, so as to produce more, better, safer and more affordable agricultural products; he believed that at present insufficient attention is paid to the position of the production link in agricultural informatization policy. He also called for further strengthening the cultivation of agricultural informatization talent, especially cultivating more composite applied talent who understand both agriculture and informatization, and improving the pay and benefits of agricultural informatization practitioners.
Xiong Benhai, director of the Animal Husbandry Information Center of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, explained his understanding of smart agriculture from the perspective of the application of IoT technology in the animal husbandry field. He believed that at present the Internet of Things based on animal husbandry lacks key technologies and products, that applications are small in scale and scattered, that an application closed loop of "perception-transmission-control" has not been formed, and that there is a lack of mature technology application models and commercial operation models, with insufficient policy support. Xiong Benhai suggested combining the professional needs of animal husbandry with the application of IoT technology and big data to form IoT solutions and turn information technology into real productivity.
Wei Yaoguang, a professor at China Agricultural University, introduced the development of agricultural informatization in European countries at the conference. He believed that the development model of European agriculture - intensive production, intelligent control, refined management, electronic transactions and systematized logistics - is the basic direction for China's future agricultural development. In Europe, the main body responsible for informatization in production and operation is the farmer, while the main body responsible for management and services is the government, which provides platforms and rules and is responsible for guidance and supervision; these are all experiences worth learning from.