How to Strengthen the Three Pillars of Agricultural Informatization

The CPC Central Committee and the State Council attach great importance to the development of the Internet economy. In 2015, the State Council successively made arrangements for developing e-commerce, advancing the "Internet Plus" action, and promoting big data development. The Fifth Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee clearly proposed that during the "13th Five-Year Plan" period, we must vigorously implement the strategy of building a cyber power, implement the "Internet Plus" action plan, develop the sharing economy, and implement the national big data strategy. The Central Rural Work Conference and the National Agricultural Work Conference held earlier this year both made further arrangements for vigorously developing agricultural informatization. We must deeply understand and earnestly implement these arrangements, strengthen the "three pillars" of "Internet Plus" modern agriculture, agricultural and rural big data, and agricultural information security assurance, so as to provide impetus and guarantee for achieving marked progress in agricultural modernization.

At present, agricultural modernization and informatization have formed a historic convergence, providing a major opportunity for agriculture to achieve transformation, upgrading, and leapfrog development. In planning and advancing agricultural informatization, we must accurately grasp the four characteristics it presents: First, it is ubiquitous. The future will be a world where everyone is connected, everything is connected, and every industry is connected. The Internet, like water and air, is indispensable to everyone and will inevitably integrate into every industry and field of agriculture. Second, it creates something out of nothing. The online world breeds infinite possibilities. In the future, agricultural IoT, agricultural big data, agricultural e-commerce, and agricultural information services will give rise to many new industries, new business forms, and new business models. Third, it is meticulously attentive. At present, market competition is shifting from being product-centered to being service-centered. Whether relevant enterprises provide various services to farmers or sell agricultural products to urban and rural residents, they must enhance their service awareness and provide meticulous, high-quality service. Fourth, it has boundless prospects. "Internet Plus" modern agriculture, agricultural and rural big data, agricultural IoT, agricultural e-commerce, and other developments have enormous potential and infinitely bright prospects.

At the same time, from the strategic height of implementing the spirit of the Fifth Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee, adapting to and leading the new normal of economic development, and building a moderately prosperous society in all respects, we must fully recognize the enormous role of agricultural informatization. First, it accelerates the transformation of development mode. It helps accelerate the realization of intelligent agricultural production, networked operation, efficient management, and convenient services; relying on scientific and technological progress and the improvement of workers' quality, it promotes the transformation of the agricultural development mode and takes the path of a new type of agricultural modernization with Chinese characteristics featuring efficient output, safe products, resource conservation, and environmental friendliness. Second, it accelerates structural adjustment. It helps advance supply-side structural reform in agriculture, accelerate the establishment of an agricultural industrial system, operational system, and production system oriented by consumer demand, promote precise matching of supply and demand, and meet individualized and diversified consumer demand. Third, it accelerates the promotion of balance. It helps accelerate the onlineization and datafication of agriculture, improve the mechanism of "speaking with data, making decisions with data, managing with data, and innovating with data," raise the level of macro decision-making and management based on data, and promote balance in the total quantity and structure of agricultural product supply and demand. Fourth, it accelerates the filling of shortcomings. It helps accelerate the gathering of technology flows, material flows, capital flows, and talent flows into rural areas led by information flows, speed up the process of agricultural modernization, promote the integrated development of the primary, secondary, and tertiary industries, boost targeted poverty alleviation and targeted poverty eradication, and fill as soon as possible the shortcomings of agricultural modernization, especially in impoverished rural areas, in building a moderately prosperous society in all respects.

In accordance with the deployment requirements of "synchronized development of the four modernizations," we must implement the development concepts of innovation, coordination, green development, openness, and sharing, solidly carry out all key tasks in agricultural informatization, and provide new elements and new impetus for accelerating the building of agricultural modernization. At present, the key is to strengthen the "three pillars."

The first pillar is implementing the "Internet Plus" modern agriculture action. This is the "operating system" for developing agricultural informatization. We must accelerate the development of agricultural e-commerce, focus on solving problems such as information asymmetry, high circulation costs, unclear profit models, and an imperfect credibility system, strengthen the connection between agricultural production and operation entities and e-commerce platforms, and expand pilot programs for direct delivery of fresh agricultural products, agricultural means of production to rural areas, and leisure and sightseeing agriculture e-commerce. We must vigorously implement the agricultural IoT experimental demonstration project, accelerate scientific and technological breakthroughs, increase the application of cost-saving and efficiency-enhancing agricultural IoT models, and strive to achieve scale benefits first in areas such as livestock and aquaculture and high-efficiency facility agriculture. We must accelerate the advancement of information into villages and households, continue to expand scale, gather service resources, strengthen risk prevention and control, improve market-oriented operating mechanisms, accelerate the online operation of the national platform for information into villages and households, and ensure that public welfare services, convenience services, e-commerce, and training experiences are delivered at village-level information service stations. We must increase efforts to cultivate new farmers, incorporate village-level information officers, e-commerce, and information technology application into training programs for new-type professional farmers and college student village officials, implement mobile phone application skills training for farmers, organize national competitions, and cultivate and support a group of new farmers who understand both the Internet and agriculture.

The second pillar is developing agricultural and rural big data. This is the "central processing unit" for advancing agricultural informatization. We must accelerate the datafication transformation of agriculture, vigorously promote data integration, sharing, and orderly opening, fully leverage the predictive function of big data, and deepen innovative applications of big data in agricultural production, operation, management, and services. We must consolidate the foundation for the development and application of agricultural and rural big data, build a national agricultural data center, promote data sharing and opening, give play to the functions of various types of data, and improve the agricultural data standards system. We must grasp the key areas for the development and application of agricultural and rural big data, support intelligent agricultural production, implement precise monitoring of agricultural resources and the environment, carry out forecasting and early warning of agricultural natural disasters, strengthen monitoring and early warning of animal diseases and plant pests and diseases, realize full-process traceability of agricultural product quality and safety, realize traceable information queries across the entire industrial chain of crop seed industry, strengthen data support for monitoring and early warning of agricultural product production and marketing information, serve innovation in agricultural operation systems and mechanisms, advance sharing of data resources for agricultural scientific and technological innovation, meet the individualized needs of farmers' production and operation, and promote efficient and transparent agricultural management.

The third pillar is ensuring network information security. This is the "firewall" that consolidates agricultural informatization. We must ensure that informatization construction projects and information network security are planned simultaneously, built simultaneously, and operated and maintained simultaneously. We must improve the security assurance system for websites and important information systems, scientifically plan and build disaster recovery centers, improve network security management norms, strengthen security protection measures such as virus prevention, vulnerability management, intrusion prevention, information encryption, and access control, and enhance network security monitoring and protection capabilities. We must formulate, improve, and strictly implement network security systems such as information security level protection and risk assessment, clarify the scope boundaries, responsible entities, and specific requirements of network security assurance in each link of data and information collection, transmission, storage, use, and opening, strengthen supervision and inspection, and ensure that organization is in place, measures are in place, technology is in place, and responsibilities are fulfilled, so as to ensure network information security.