How can agricultural big data help build smart agriculture?
In the information age, farming and breeding are no longer extensive agriculture that depends on the weather. How can big data be used to build contemporary smart agriculture? On November 17, the 2016 Henan Modern Agriculture Development High-level Forum, themed "Henan's Agricultural Development Trends in the Big Data Era," was held in the provincial capital Zhengzhou. More than 100 agricultural experts, agricultural entrepreneurs, family farm owners and others gathered to jointly look ahead to the future path of modern agriculture development against the backdrop of big data and discuss strategies for the development of smart agriculture.
"Food is the first necessity of the people. As a major traditional agricultural country, China has a splendid agricultural civilization. In the past, because there was not enough manpower, capital and awareness to fully collect and use the data obtained in daily farming, key production links such as seed selection and planting relied entirely on experience and lacked scientific guidance," said Gu Jianquan, director of the Development Research Center of the People's Government of Henan Province. In the information age, accelerating the construction of agricultural big data projects will help the development of smart agriculture.
The reporter learned that Henan Province is currently actively promoting the construction of the National Big Data (Henan) Comprehensive Experimental Zone. It plans that by 2018, it will basically complete the National Transportation and Logistics Big Data Innovation Application Demonstration Zone, the National Agricultural and Grain Big Data Innovation Application Pilot Zone, the National Central Data Gathering and Exchange Base, and a nationally important big data innovation and entrepreneurship base.
"Accelerating the construction of agricultural big data is a new trend in modern agriculture development and a new driving force for advancing agricultural modernization," Gu Jianquan said. He hoped that relevant department leaders, experts, scholars and entrepreneurs would continue to pay attention to the construction and development of agricultural big data, strengthen data application, and develop smart agriculture.
How can agricultural big data construction be done well? In this regard, Zheng Guoqing, director of the Agricultural Economics and Information Research Center of the Henan Academy of Agricultural Sciences, said that while establishing an Internet of Things remote monitoring system for the seedling conditions of major grain crops (wheat and corn), it is also necessary to follow up on technical aspects such as data acquisition, data resource management, data storage, data mining, data computing and data visualization.
"Data is a new essential element in modern agricultural production. Only when technical support enables agricultural data to achieve scale, diversity and efficient use can it become true agricultural big data," Zheng Guoqing said. Agricultural big data will help the development of smart agriculture, and "it will be very easy to realize a large farm where two or three people manage several thousand mu of land."
At the forum, many agricultural experts shared their views and suggestions on the current construction of agricultural big data in Henan Province, and enterprise representatives also shared with attendees their successful experiences and future visions in modern agriculture development.
In addition, this forum also presented awards such as the "2016 Henan Top Ten Innovative Figures in Modern Agriculture" and the "2016 Henan Top Ten Outstanding Agricultural Product Brands," introduced the latest scientific research achievements of some outstanding agricultural products and agricultural inputs, and displayed the development achievements of modern agriculture in Henan.
It is reported that this forum was hosted by the Development Research Center of the People's Government of Henan Province and the Henan Academy of Agricultural Sciences, and jointly organized by the Henan Modern Agriculture Research Association, the Rural Agriculture Farmers Magazine Agency and others.