By Yin Haodong, Department of Rural Economy, DRC; Xiao Rongmei, Huo Peng & Gao Yuchen, China Academy of Information and Communications Technology

Research Report, No.146, 2021 (Total 6211) 2021-6-4

Abstract: The development of smart agriculture is an important way to promote agricultural modernization. Some explorations relating to smart agriculture have been made in China and played a positive role in promoting the modernization of agricultural production, agricultural industry and operational system, providing effective ways to remove the current hurdles facing rural development. However, some problems remain to be addressed such as the inadequate application ability of business entities in agricultural industry, the shortage of resource input, the unsound transformation mechanism to bring together enterprises, universities and research institutes, the lack of key technological support and the weak application and management of rural big data, all of which have restricted the promotion and application of smart agriculture. To drive rural modernization with smart agriculture, we need to establish the smart agriculture promotion system in line with China’s agricultural operational characteristics, lay emphasis on the institutional innovation, strengthen the leading role of the government, set up the collaborative mechanism between government departments and enterprises and invigorate vitality of market players in participating modernization drive. We need to refine the industry-academia-research transformation mechanism, enhance R&D of key technologies, raise the self-innovation ability of core technologies and build an agricultural big data system to meet the needs of smart agriculture.

Keywords: smart agriculture, data, intelligence, policy options