How can digital agriculture be transformed through scientific research and application to form stronger competitiveness and higher productivity?

Digital agriculture is the core of agricultural modernization and an important part of digital village construction and rural revitalization. "Digitalization" is the most powerful embodiment of technology enabling agriculture. So what exactly is digital agriculture? Can digital agriculture be transformed from a local "bonsai" into a "landscape" for large-scale promotion and application? How to form stronger competitiveness and higher productivity through the transformation of scientific research and application?

Four components of digital agriculture

Digital agriculture is a collective concept, which mainly includes the following four parts:

1. Agricultural Internet of Things

In essence, the agricultural Internet of Things is a set of numerical control systems. In a specific closed system, objects are connected based on devices such as probes, sensors, cameras, etc. It automatically regulates and operates according to the parameters and models that have been determined. Due to the need to invest in hardware equipment and networking as the basis, the investment is large, mainly used for the management and operation of the production process of facility agriculture, but also for the processing of agricultural products, warehousing and logistics management.

2. Agricultural big data

Agricultural big data is a concept corresponding to the agricultural Internet of Things, which is a data system that collects, identifies and identifies data in an open system, and establishes a database, combines and optimizes multidimensional and massive data through parameters, models and algorithms, provides a basis for production operations and business decisions, and realizes partial automated control and operation. Because it operates in a completely open system, it is mainly used for the production of field agriculture and the operation and management of the entire agricultural industry chain.

3. Precision farming

Precision agriculture is an execution and operating system built on the hardware of agricultural machinery. It is mainly based on the single machine hardware of agricultural machinery, equipped with detection equipment and intelligent control software to achieve accurate operation, variable control (including variable sowing, variable fertilization, variable spraying, etc.), unmanned driving, and the best working environment and scene adaptation. Precision agriculture emphasizes the precise and intelligent control of (single) equipment and facility operation, which is hardware + software.

4. Smart agriculture

Smart agriculture is an expert decision-making system based on empirical model, the core of which is software system. Smart agriculture emphasizes an intelligent decision-making system with a variety of hardware facilities and equipment, which is system + hardware. The decision model and system of smart agriculture can be widely used in the field of agricultural iot and agricultural big data.

Three characteristics of digital agriculture

1. Highly specialized, large-scale and enterprise-oriented production

The specialization of American agricultural production is multi-level, which is mainly manifested in regional specialization, farm specialization and production process specialization. The continental United States is divided into several major crop belts, each of which is most suitable for the growth of a crop, such as the famous "corn belt", "cow belt" and so on; The vast majority of farms produce only one crop and are cultivated on a large scale; Some farms produce only one variety of a crop, or do breeding for only one crop. In this way, according to local conditions, each has its own special, has achieved a good combination of specialization and scale, and has formed a modern industrial model of specialized production, intensive operation, and enterprise management.

2. Improved agricultural production system

The United States has formed a developed pre-production, production and post-production closely linked agricultural production system, including the production and supply of agricultural production materials, as well as the storage, transportation, processing and sales of agricultural products after harvest. They have a clear division of labor and efficient cooperation, and agricultural production is orderly and efficient under the maintenance of relevant agricultural legal systems.

3. "Trinity" of agricultural education, scientific research and extension

Agriculture in the United States is privately operated, but governments at all levels actively support the development of agricultural science and technology, and establish a distinctive "trinity" agricultural education, scientific research and extension system. Agricultural colleges simultaneously undertake the three functions of agricultural education, scientific research and extension, so that teaching, scientific research and promotion are closely combined to provide a strong technical impetus for agricultural development.

Present situation of digital agriculture development in China

At the moment, In the agricultural digital information standard system, agricultural information collection technology, large-scale agricultural spatial information resource database, crop growth model, animal and plant digital virtual design technology, remote diagnosis of agricultural problems, agricultural expert system and decision support system, agricultural distance education multimedia information system, embedded handheld agricultural information technology products, greenhouse environment intelligent control system In the research and application of digital agricultural macro monitoring system and agricultural bioinformatics, Chinese enterprises have achieved important stage results. Through different types of regional application demonstrations, China's digital agricultural technology framework and digital agricultural technology system, application system and operation management system have been initially formed, which has promoted the process of agricultural informatization and agricultural modernization in China.

However, China's digital agriculture is still in a relatively early stage, and a large number of hardware investments have not completely solved the fundamental problems of agriculture. In the construction of digital agriculture in many places, there are problems such as "increment does not increase income", "seed, production and marketing" disconnection, or digital concept is divorced from the actual production environment. The details include:

1. Heavy hardware, light software

Both governments and farmers tend to confuse digital agriculture with the concept of agricultural mechanization. The fundamental difference between digital agriculture and agricultural mechanization is that mechanization uses machinery to replace manual labor, while digital agriculture uses data to drive machinery to achieve automated operation and intelligent regulation. Without data and software to drive the Internet of Things, in fact, is still a tool, and mechanical agriculture is not fundamentally different. Only by opening up the software platform can we open the key to big data, smart agriculture and digital economy.

2. All data, no wisdom

Data is the basic resource of digital agriculture, and in recent years, the government and enterprises have invested heavily in data collection. However, due to the lack of clear business direction and the necessary data operation skills, the work on the quality control of data acquisition, analytical processing and modeling applications is lagging behind. The acquisition and application of data is a two-way interactive process, and only by constantly trying to use data to generate business value can a valuable data acquisition channel be established.

3. Digital economy is weak

At present, most of the applications of digital agriculture in China still stay in the production link, strictly speaking, it is in the initial stage of modern agriculture 3.0, and the informatization and economic degree of other links in the industrial chain is low. Although the Ministry of Agriculture has proposed a "whole industry chain" agricultural big data development path, it has not yet fully stimulated the potential of other links in the industry chain, and the business mode of agricultural products e-commerce has not yet begun data-driven attempts.

Trends in digital agriculture

1. Data supply customization

Data resources are the cornerstone of developing digital agriculture. At present, China's digital agriculture faces the dilemma of high data collection cost. As data thinking takes hold, the organizational cost of data collection will drop dramatically; With the upgrading of the agricultural Internet of Things, the continuous open source of public data and the improvement of the informatization level of practitioners, the explicit cost of data collection will continue to decrease.

2. Data model localization

Discovering the value of data is the driving force behind the development of digital agriculture. Israel can sell us the hardware, but never open the back office, because the real core technology is the model that realizes the value of the data. At present, with the intensification of scientific and technological competition among major countries, the barriers to the introduction of scientific and technological achievements are increasing, and because of the large differences in agricultural formats at home and abroad, we cannot apply foreign models and models. On the other hand, China continues to encourage industrial transformation of scientific research results, and cross-border cooperation between industry and academia, agriculture and data science is gradually deepening, so it is a general trend to achieve independent research and development of industrial core data models.

3. Intelligent agricultural machinery

There is only a "data-driven" distance between mechanization and intelligence. Made in China 2025 strategy clearly "intelligent manufacturing" as the main direction, in line with the market trend, Haier, Goldwind and other old manufacturers have actively carried out digital transformation, to find new growth points.

4. Industrial chain virtualization

With the effective improvement of the digitalization degree of all aspects of the agricultural industry, when the digital machine intelligence and business intelligence enter the production and management, the industrial chain will continue to enter the network, and gradually complete the digital mapping of reality in the network world. Industrial chain virtualization will further promote the elimination of information asymmetry, improve industrial efficiency, and find new growth.