Promote the rapid development of smart agriculture

With the widespread application of modern information technology in the field of agriculture, the agricultural intelligent revolution represented by smart agriculture has arrived. Smart agriculture is an advanced stage in the development of agricultural informatization from digitization to networking and then to intelligence. It has milestone significance for agricultural development and has become a trend in the development of modern agriculture in the world.

In recent years, with strong government support, China’s smart agriculture has developed rapidly. Under the trend of policy guidance and scale operation, the R&D and application of smart agricultural technologies such as commonly used environmental agricultural sensors, agricultural remote sensing technology, agricultural UAVs, agricultural machinery Beidou navigation, agricultural Big data and intelligent algorithms have made great progress, and some products have basically achieved domestic substitution. However, we should also be aware that China’s smart agriculture still lacks basic research and technological accumulation, and the overall technological level is 15 to 20 years behind that of developed countries. The following factors have to some extent affected the rapid development of smart agriculture in China.

One issue is the small scale of farmland and the prominent fragmentation of arable land in China. The average farm size in the United States is over 200 hectares, with 82% of EU countries having a farm area greater than 20 hectares and 52% having a farm area of 100 hectares. However, China’s farmland is small and highly fragmented, with over 95% of small farmers operating under 3.4 hectares accounting for over 80% of the total arable land area in China. The agricultural production and operation methods of small farmers and small plots have led to low marginal benefits of smart agricultural technology investment in China and low enthusiasm for the application of agricultural management entities.

Second, the level of Mechanised agriculture in China is relatively low. Implementing smart agriculture cannot do without the support of agricultural machinery and equipment. In recent years, China has increased its efforts to support and promote full process and comprehensive mechanization, and has achieved gratifying results. At the end of 2020, the comprehensive mechanization rate of China’s main grain crop cultivation and harvest reached 71%, the comprehensive mechanization rate of crop cultivation and harvest in hilly and mountainous areas was 49%, the comprehensive mechanization rate of facility horticulture was 32%, the mechanization rate of animal husbandry and aquaculture was 35%, and the mechanization rate of aquaculture was 30%. However, due to factors such as diverse demand for agricultural machinery products and complex operating environments, there is still a 10 to 20 percentage point gap in China’s current level of agricultural mechanization and intelligence of agricultural machinery equipment compared to developed countries.

Thirdly, rural infrastructure is weak. Although rural broadband networks have already covered villages, the proportion of rural households and agricultural parks is low; The instability of 4G network signals, the lack of 5G base stations, and high communication costs have limited the development of agricultural informatization; The application of rural information collection terminals is limited, the infrastructure of the Internet of Things is weak, and there are few monitoring points for farmland meteorology, farmland quality, soil moisture, hydrology, etc; The lack of professional information equipment operation and maintenance teams has led to difficulties and high costs for agricultural production and operation entities to obtain information.

Fourthly, the effective supply of smart agricultural technology is insufficient. Due to weak basic research and insufficient innovation of information sensing agricultural sensors, intelligent Decision model algorithms and high-end agricultural intelligent equipment technology products, they cannot meet the needs of implementing smart agriculture. At the same time, there is also a lack of practical low threshold technologies targeting Chinese farmers and small plots, making it difficult to meet the needs of a wide range of farmers in China. In addition, the ecological diversity of agriculture also has diverse demands for technology and application models. However, for research and development entities, after investing a large amount of funds in research and development, they cannot replicate and promote on a large scale like industrial technology products, resulting in the unwillingness and unwillingness of enterprise research and development entities to invest.