2024-04-10
Lookout
In the strawberry town of Yangcunqiao Town, Jiande City, Zhejiang Province, staff inspect the strawberries grown in the "Digital Intelligence Strawberry Plant Factory" (photo taken on January 26, 2024) by Weng Xinyang
Feeding monitoring, external environment monitoring, cow estrus prompts...... 774 such smart dairy farms have been built in Hebei, with an intelligent rate of 93%. Zhao Yunbo, general manager of Leyuan Animal Husbandry Handan Co., Ltd., said that with smart equipment, the current Wantou Ranch only needs 21 workers, the breeding scale has quadrupled compared with 2019, and the annual milk production has increased by about 5%.
The permanent population of rural areas on the mainland is gradually decreasing, and the question of who will farm the land in the future needs to be solved urgently. Smart agriculture may become an important answer to the "main question" of the construction of an agricultural power in the mainland.
Through intelligent decision-making, automatic control, and precision farming, agricultural production is less manpower and more refined, which has increasingly become an important path for promoting the high-quality development of modern agriculture in various places. The practice of smart agriculture in many places is not limited to the simple application of technology, but gradually penetrates into the organizational model, industry, university and research through all links, and pulls smart agriculture into people's field of vision more extensively.
However, the current road to smart agriculture exploration is also facing the situation that the infrastructure cannot keep up, the data quality needs to be improved, and the supply of "smart" talents exceeds the demand.
Workers pick soilless tomatoes in the Southwest Smart Agriculture Industrial Park in Dongpo District, Meishan City, Sichuan Province (photo taken on February 11, 2024) Photo by Yao Yongliang
The practice of smart agriculture is going deeper
In Shandong Province, the "post-90s" He Shibao controls drones to patrol the fields under the contiguous wheat fields. "This allows for a more efficient grasp of the field situation and facilitates timely field management. He said. Now, He Shibao alone manages 1,000 acres of land, combined with the application of new agricultural technologies such as water and fertilizer integration, deep ploughing, etc., the grain output of the land he planted has maintained high and stable yield year after year.
He Shibao is the first "master farmer" introduced by Plains Land Luwang Agricultural Development Co., Ltd. in 2018. Of the company's 32 young farmers and related staff, 9 are master's students. Using advanced means such as the Internet of Things, agricultural big data, unmanned aerial vehicles, and water and fertilizer integration, the agricultural production efficiency of these "new farmers" has generally been greatly improved.
Behind this, the local government has developed an incentive mechanism to attract highly educated talents to engage in smart agricultural production around the innovative organization of smart agriculture, so that capable people can take root in the field.
Zhang Yansheng, general manager of Luwang Company, said: "The company has set up a one-year talent training period and given a fixed salary. In the later stage, the monthly salary is paid according to the area of the land under management, and the actual planting profit of the farm is subtracted from the basic salary, and the remaining half is calculated and becomes the performance bonus of the farmer. Coupled with the local talent subsidy, the annual income of college student farmers is more than 100,000 yuan. ”
In 2020, Luwang Company also established the first "Farmer University" in Shandong Province to organize farmers to systematically learn agricultural knowledge, form an agricultural industry alliance, establish a food security industry consortium, and help people improve food production capacity.
In addition to carrying out institutional innovation around "smart" farmers, all localities are also focusing on "smart" hardware infrastructure, unifying data platforms and releasing the value of data.
Industry experts predict that in the future, big data-driven knowledge decision-making may replace manual experience decision-making, and leading intelligent control will replace simple timing control, which will be the development trend of smart agriculture. Based on this, it is the key to solve the practical problems of agriculture to break through the "data island" and deeply integrate big data with agriculture.
Since 2020, Zhejiang Province has focused on building a rural brain and built the core architecture of "11153", that is, "one warehouse" for data collection, "one map" for geographic information, "one code" for functional services, and "five libraries" for core capabilities, to fully support the construction of digital villages. At present, 11 cities and 90 counties (cities and districts) in Zhejiang Province have achieved the "rural brain" at the provincial, municipal and county levels, with an average of more than 1.2 million visits per day.
Tao Zhongliang, a second-level researcher of the Agricultural Mechanization and Digitalization Department of Zhejiang Provincial Department of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, introduced that on the user-oriented visual "three rural" map, 153 layers in 8 categories, such as the main body, villages, land, and industries, have been sorted out, which can provide unified, authoritative and standard service support for provinces, cities and counties. Users only need to scan the "Zhejiang Agricultural Code" to enter different modules.
In Xianju County, Taizhou City, where bayberry is produced, the "Village Brain" integrates the local bayberry industry map, and the data is accurate to each farmer and each bayberry plant, providing accurate data guarantee for insurance, invoicing and other services. At the same time, the planting area, agricultural material procurement, repayment records, etc. have also become the basis for credit.
Tao Zhongliang said that Zhejiang Province has unified data formats and language systems from the source, broken down inter-departmental data barriers, avoided "chimneys", and showed a good trend of efficient links between the government and the main business side, the production end and the consumer side in the local tea industry, animal husbandry, fishery and other fields.
In addition, on the basis of new farmers and new platforms empowering smart agriculture, all localities have also accelerated the cracking of the "two skins" phenomenon in theory and practice, so that cutting-edge technologies are closer to agriculture.
In Zhongke Hefei Smart Agriculture Valley Co., Ltd., a rapid soil nutrient detection equipment can obtain accurate data in half an hour. The traditional inspection in the industry takes an average of one month, which is often difficult to meet the demand of agricultural hours. Chen Xiangyu, head of the R&D team, said, "After the establishment of the Smart Agriculture Valley in 2020, we will gather talents in multiple fields to form an established scientific research platform, collect feedback from large growers, and accelerate the service of scientific research results."
Smart Agriculture Valley is a state-owned enterprise jointly established by the Hefei Institute of Physical Sciences of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the People's Government of Changfeng County, Hefei, to undertake innovative research, industrial incubation, base experiments and other functions, aiming to propose a holistic solution for smart agriculture. In recent years, they have explored a number of experiences in cracking the "two skins" of scientific research and application.
The first is "double posting", so that scientific and technological research and development have a market basis, so that scientific research personnel have a "way out". Hu Yimin is an associate researcher at a research institute and the deputy general manager of Smart Agriculture Valley. Here, there are nearly 100 employees in two capacities. Hu Yimin said that the agricultural industry has thin profits and high risks, and enterprises are reluctant to rashly increase investment in science and technology.
The second is to transform and use it locally, so that a single product can be integrated into the industrial ecology. "Insect face recognition", enzyme-free fluorescence visualization of pesticide residue rapid detection...... A series of newly developed products are quickly transformed into applications here. At present, the Smart Agriculture Valley Industrial Park has incubated and attracted 40 smart agricultural enterprises, covering the whole industrial chain. These enterprises give priority to each other to use the latest scientific research results, and have formed a smart agriculture industry ecosystem.
The third is to promote integrated innovation by "combining research and research" and "combining research and application". Hu Yimin said that in the industrial park, the underlying data of enterprises is open, which is convenient for the formation of collaborative relationships. At the same time, the production base and the agricultural operators participating in the scientific research and experiment will put forward suggestions for improvement of equipment and systems based on data, which increases the market-oriented and practical adaptability of integrated innovation.
The blockages in the development of smart agriculture need to be solved
In recent years, some places have gained valuable experience in the exploration of smart agriculture and explored the way forward for future development. However, in some remote areas, due to topographical factors, the plots are scattered and not concentrated, and the infrastructure needs to be strengthened. For example, in some concentrated and contiguous farms, the communication signal is still unstable due to the distance from the signal base station or the obstruction, and the wireless communication of the agricultural Internet of Things needs to be improved.
The need to strengthen the infrastructure of smart agriculture is one of the problems faced by the development of smart agriculture, in addition, the development of smart agriculture in the mainland still needs to overcome many "hurdles".
The per capita cultivated land area of peasant households is small, and it is not cost-effective for farmers to invest in land on small plots, and the custodian fees collected by socialized service organizations are not enough to support the input. Some equipment dealers said that farmers who are willing to try to make intelligent attempts on farmland are basically large households. However, some large grain growers are worried that farmers will take back the transferred land ahead of schedule, and they have concerns about hardware investment.
The person in charge of an aquatic company in Shandong took the fishery as an example, the traditional fishery is a labor-intensive industry, and the smart fishery should realize fish behavior identification, automatic control of equipment, unmanned workshop processing, etc., which are currently unavoidable for one household aquaculture.
The interviewed experts said that the degree of agricultural production intensification still needs to be improved is a "hurdle" that the development of smart agriculture needs to overcome, and the development of agricultural socialization organizations in mainland China is still in the early stage, and the potential of smart agriculture has not yet been fully released.
Another "hurdle" in the development of smart agriculture is at the data level. On the one hand, agricultural data collection and utilization are insufficient. A number of interviewed experts told reporters that at present, the market has not yet formed a strong third-party company for agricultural data collection, and a large number of the underlying data of smart agriculture in various places comes from manual filling, the quality of data is debatable, and there is still little data to effectively guide the level of agricultural production.
"The impact of difficulties in collecting agricultural data is fundamental. Hu Yimin said that accurate decision-making relies on reliable data support, otherwise it is difficult for the agricultural digital system to play an effective role.
According to industry experts, at present, the average yield of large-fruit tomatoes in smart greenhouses in the Netherlands has reached 72 kg per square meter, and there is still a gap between the highest yield of domestic smart greenhouses, mainly due to the lack of plant growth environment regulation model algorithms that are suitable for domestic production scenarios, and data quality is the key to affecting the model algorithm.
On the other hand, there is a lack of various standards for agricultural data in the mainland, not only the lack of standards for the data of different Internet of Things devices and different agricultural facilities and equipment, but also the lack of operational standards for government-related management data, which objectively makes it difficult to integrate data. In 2022, Zhejiang Province issued the first local regulation in the field of public data in the country, the Zhejiang Provincial Public Data Regulations, but there is currently no specific law on agricultural data at the national level, and the management of agricultural data is temporarily "unlawable".
A person in charge of a related company said: "We can see the growth of crops in all plots in the area through satellite remote sensing images combined with field measurements. But because the data is not connected, I don't know who owns this land, and I don't know how many acres of land he has managed under his name. Some of the trend predictions we have based on spectral analysis cannot be provided to groups in need, and it is difficult to realize the value of data. ”
In addition, the shortage of talents also restricts the development potential of smart agriculture. The person in charge of the relevant department said that at present, in the research and development, promotion and application of digital villages and smart agricultural technology products in the mainland, the supply of information practical talents exceeds the demand, which affects the research and development, promotion and application of smart agricultural technology products.
Some scholars said that one of the reasons lies in the layout of interdisciplinary education and the institutional mechanism to guide the sinking of talents. At present, both agricultural undergraduates and computer science undergraduates do not have enough understanding of interdisciplinary disciplines such as agricultural digitalization, and face interdisciplinary problems in practice. In addition, the current willingness of college graduates to be employed at the county level needs to be improved, resulting in a greater shortage of relevant talents at the grassroots level.
Multi-party efforts to solve practical problems
In order to solve various problems, the interviewed experts, grassroots cadres, enterprise leaders, agricultural business entities, agricultural socialization organizations and other different people, combined with their own experience, gave specific suggestions from different perspectives.
For example, we should make overall plans for infrastructure construction according to local conditions, improve the scientificity and rationality of decision-making, optimize the allocation of resources, and improve the quality and efficiency of decision-making. Strengthen infrastructure construction in traditional agricultural areas, and from the perspective of ensuring national food security, the government has taken the lead in coordinating multiple units to promote the infrastructure required for the construction of smart agriculture. In the specific implementation process, infrastructure construction and smart agriculture projects can be planned as a whole, and smart agriculture projects can be prioritized in areas with complete infrastructure. In areas where it is difficult to achieve irrigation, promoting the combination of organic dry farming and smart agriculture can also effectively improve agricultural output.
Another example is to optimize the allocation of smart agriculture resources, encourage key groups and key enterprises to carry out policy deployment in all fields and at all levels, stimulate the initiative and enthusiasm of all subjects, and promote the development of smart agriculture.
In order to improve the scale of agricultural production, the interviewed experts and grassroots cadres believe that in the current stage of development, large-scale and intensive operators are the main investors and users of smart agriculture, and smart agriculture projects should be carried out more around such business entities to provide them with necessary financial subsidies and policy preferences. In view of the dilemma of the performance of the transfer of land that some large grain growers are worried about, we can explore ways such as village collective intermediary guarantee, cultivate farmers' sense of performance and contract spirit, and let more large households dare to invest in land during the circulation contract period. At the same time, agricultural leading enterprises are encouraged to extend their business to the direction of smart agriculture and introduce relevant incentive policies.
In order to achieve accurate and effective accumulation of agriculture-related data, from the perspective of farmers, Wang Haitian, head of Xinjiang Kebai Hongye Technology Co., Ltd., said that relevant departments and smart agricultural enterprises have actively introduced incentive measures to enhance the enthusiasm of farmers to assist in data collection. "Due to the lack of an effective understanding of the prospects for data collection, farmers are often not motivated to assist in data collection. We can explore the mechanism of data dividends between enterprises and farmers, and encourage the installation and promotion of various agriculture-related sensors, for example, enterprises can give farmers who assist in collecting data and maintaining equipment every year to reward some agricultural materials for incentives. ”
From the perspective of enterprises, the person in charge of the relevant enterprises believes that the continental climate is diverse, the terrain is complex, and there are multiple microclimates in a county in some areas, and the specific modeling work is heavy, which requires a lot of investment from the company. Therefore, companies that model based on agricultural big data are given adequate intellectual property protection. Allow them to have the exclusive right to use the one-land farming model for a certain period of time, so as to encourage them to carry out similar data accumulation, analysis, and application exploration.
The interviewed experts reminded that the government should avoid being greedy for perfection in data collection. "Data is hierarchical, and the purpose of the government's data collection is to serve the industrial chain, requiring enterprises to surrender 'too detailed data', which is not conducive to protecting the enthusiasm of enterprises to collect data. ”
In order to encourage all entities to unify standards, collaborate to establish a sharing platform for agriculture-related data, and break through data barriers between departments, the interviewed experts believe that we can start with the institutional mechanism to establish an ecological chain of data collection, aggregation, analysis and use that is convenient for collection, uploading and sharing, and convenient use. Establish a national-level overall management mechanism for agriculture-related basic data, build a platform for sharing agriculture-related data, clarify the authority for open access to data according to the R&D needs of scientific research institutes and enterprises, clarify confidentiality responsibilities, and accelerate the legislative work on agricultural data security.
In addition, powerful large companies can also be encouraged to actively enter the construction of a unified data platform, and gradually establish a multi-party benefit benefit mechanism, so that the invested enterprises can benefit in the long run. Realize the "rich minerals and rich mining" in the field of smart agriculture and achieve a win-win situation for all parties.
In order to cultivate interdisciplinary talents and encourage professionals to go down to the grassroots level, Li Daoliang, a professor at the College of Information and Electrical Engineering of China Agricultural University, proposed to optimize the "three rural" talent training methods in colleges and universities, anchor the development direction of agricultural modernization, and improve the ability to serve agriculture. Innovate the interdisciplinary cultivation method of smart agriculture talents, so that students of related majors can gain a broad enough vision and have a deeper and more accurate understanding of the development direction of smart agriculture. (Reporter Xu Xiong, Shui Jinchen, Xu Shunda, Ye Jing, Huang Teng, Guo Yaru, Gou Lifeng, Zhao Hongyu)
Editor in charge: He Ye
Forward: Sun Yan
Review: Hao Lin