Internet Plus agriculture helps build smart soil and fertilizer management in Beijing
Original headline: The fruit of Internet Plus agriculture
-- Zhao Yongzhi, director of the Soil and Fertilizer Workstation of the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Agriculture, discusses smart soil and fertilizer management
Zhao Yongzhi (left) explaining how to grow grapes in winter through smart soil and fertilizer management. Photo by Chang Li, reporter for this newspaper
"At present, China's agriculture faces problems such as resource shortages, extensive management, worsening pollution and insufficient scientific and technological innovation. To solve these problems, we must rely on new methods and new technologies and innovate development concepts. The concept of 'smart agriculture,' represented by the application of technologies such as the Internet of Things and Internet Plus, is an effective way to solve the current problems." Zhao Yongzhi explained to reporters the significance of developing smart soil and fertilizer management for the sustainable development of China's agriculture. He said that soil is the basic resource of agricultural production, and fertilizer is the basic input of agricultural production, the "food" of grain. "The foundation of agricultural development lies in soil and fertilizer, and the key to agricultural ecology and the quality and safety of agricultural products also lies in soil and fertilizer. Developing smart soil and fertilizer management is of great significance for efficient agricultural output, product safety and environmental friendliness."
Zhao Yongzhi believes that in recent years, the maturation and application of technologies such as environmental sensing, network communication and cloud computing have initially achieved intelligent management of soil, fertilizer and crops, making the construction of smart soil and fertilizer management possible. "The urgency of modern agricultural development determines the necessity of building smart soil and fertilizer management."
In plain terms, smart soil and fertilizer management is intelligent soil and fertilizer management and intelligent services based on the full digitization and informatization of soil, fertilizer, water, air, crops, meteorological conditions and so on, achieving "efficient, safe, simple and practical" soil and fertilizer technology, just like soil testing and formulated fertilization, which materializes complex fertilization technology into a bag of fertilizer, making it easy for farmers to learn and use.
Zhao Yongzhi said that the goal of smart soil and fertilizer management is to use means such as digitization, informatization and intelligence to carry out precise management of soil, fertilizer and water and strengthen the foundational functional role of soil and fertilizer; through technological innovation and integration and changes in extension methods and mechanisms, it is necessary not only to ensure increased agricultural production and efficiency and higher farmers' incomes, but also to ensure the quality and safety of agricultural products, while also promoting the improvement of the agricultural ecological environment, so that the hidden functions of soil and fertilizer are expanded and extended and become apparent and visible, enhancing social awareness and encouraging society to care more about, love, support and participate in agriculture, forming a good situation in which the whole society values and supports agricultural development.
Zhao Yongzhi introduced that smart soil and fertilizer management contains many elements, specifically four points: First, promote precise management of soil, fertilizer and water. Promoting the development of smart soil and fertilizer management means using smart technological measures to achieve precise, quantitative management of soil, fertilizer and water in crop cultivation and integrated crop-livestock systems, avoiding the problems of farmland degradation, food pollution, ecological crisis and climate warming caused by previous extensive management. Second, strengthen smart monitoring of farmland quality. Make full use of smart technology to establish a modern dynamic monitoring system for farmland quality, understand in a timely manner the basic fertility, nutrient levels and health status of farmland, discover problems of degradation and pollution in farmland quality, and provide smart decision support for red-line early warning management of farmland quality. Third, promote intelligent supervision of soil and fertilizer inputs. Using smart soil and fertilizer technology, affix electronic tags to fertilizer products, connect fertilizer retail institutions to a network, and monitor fertilizer sales and use, which can conveniently allow understanding of the fertilizer use situation in a region and provide efficient support for regional management and control of fertilizer resources. Fourth, improve the level of informatized services for smart soil and fertilizer management. The basic information for smart soil and fertilizer information services mainly includes crop growth environment information, forecast and warning information, consultation and answers to difficult questions, smart fertilization information, soil and fertilizer technical training information and traceability information for soil and fertilizer inputs, etc. (Reporter Chang Li for this newspaper)
Cui Weiguo (second from left) explaining the three-dimensional strawberry cultivation model. Photo by Chang Li, reporter for this newspaper
Soil and fertilizer technician Qu Mingshan guiding farmers online on integrated water and fertilizer management. Photo by Chang Li, reporter for this newspaper