Promoting Rural Revitalization with Smart Agriculture

In Nanxun District, Huzhou, fruit farmers can “move in” to the standardized demonstration park, and citrus planting can achieve production demonstration, skill training, and product exhibition and sales integration; In Ninghai County, Ningbo, fishing grounds can use big data monitoring to calculate the optimal growth conditions for aquaculture products, achieving intelligent aquaculture throughout the entire process; In Shengzhou City, Shaoxing, there is no mulberry leaf in the sericulture factory. Silkworms that eat original feed can produce cocoons uninterrupted throughout the day and year… In recent years, Zhejiang has actively developed future farms with digital advantages, promoting the continuous development of smart agriculture, and providing new driving force for the modernization of local agriculture and rural areas.

Compared with traditional agricultural production, future farms will rely on technology as support and follow the path of modern agricultural development, with higher requirements for mechanization, digitization, and intelligence. For example, a future ranch in Haiyan County, Zhejiang Province, utilizes technologies such as artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, and intelligent biological earbuds to achieve unmanned, precise feeding, and intelligent environmental control of the breeding farm. It can be seen that the future of farms is not only a partial innovation in production management technology, but also a comprehensive optimization of agricultural production methods. Utilizing digital technology to achieve intensive agricultural factors, intelligent production, ecological industry, efficient management, and diversified functions is its significant advantage.

Relying on the dual drive of technology and reform, the pace of agricultural modernization can be made more stable. In the future, farms will pay more attention to connecting the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain, in order to reshape the agricultural industry system and production organization form. The initiators of future farms can be enterprises, villages, and towns. The production and operation management model “moves according to needs”, which helps to gather more social resources and achieve cluster development. For example, in Nanxun District, Huzhou City, a professional company collaborates with large grain farmers to build a future farm. The former provides the latter with a one-stop service of “cultivation, planting, management, collection, storage, milling, and sales”, and provides agricultural machinery services at a price lower than the market. The purchase of grain at a price 10% higher than the national grain price protection price increases the income of large grain farmers by 200 yuan per acre, and adds 376000 yuan to the collective income of the village. Due to the optimization of production factors such as land resources, facilities and equipment, technology, and talent, the efficiency and level of industrial management have been improved. This “village level collective economy+company+farmer” model has incorporated more farmers into the industrial chain, achieving a win-win situation for multiple parties, and is conducive to promoting common prosperity for the vast number of farmers.

The key to building an agricultural power lies in technology and reform. In recent years, new technologies such as animal networking, big data, and cloud platforms have been deeply integrated with agricultural production in various regions, providing technological wings for agriculture. As a new exploration, future farms have opened up new imaginative spaces for agricultural innovation and development. By fully leveraging the pioneering spirit of farmers, accelerating the application of big data in agriculture and rural areas, and integrating digital technology into various aspects of agricultural industry development, we can further promote the development of smart agriculture, injecting new impetus into farmers’ income growth, rural revitalization, and agricultural and rural modernization.