In the Smart Agricultural Demonstration Park of Yazhou Town, Hai’an City, Jiangsu Province, a staff member uses sensors to determinine soil conditions. Photo: XINHUA

In recent years, emerging technologies such as big data and the Internet of Things have been widely used in agriculture and rural areas, injecting new drive into rural revitalization.

The deep integration of big data and agriculture is instrumental in accelerating agricultural modernization and rural revitalization. According to Wen Fujiang, chairman of the Industrial Technology Innovation Strategic Alliance of Agriculture and Big Data, the integration can apply information technology (IT) to crop farming, poultry and livestock breeding, processing, logistics, and even consumption of agricultural products, leading to smart agriculture, which can safeguard food security and safety more effectively.

The production structure and demand for agricultural products will become more rational as big data application helps avoid blind production, which has existed in agriculture for a long time, Wen added. Big data can also play a significant role in soil management, agroecological farming, water conservancy and flood prevention.

The key to agricultural modernization is IT-based agriculture, in which big data plays an irreplaceable role. Wei Longbao, deputy director of the China Academy for Rural Development at Zhejiang University, said that informatization will transform traditional ways of agricultural production and reduce costs, thereby improving efficiency and raising farmers’ income.

Meanwhile, IT can serve as a bridge connecting agricultural products with systems such as logistics, delivery, supply and demand, and transactions, so that the problem of information asymmetry can be overcome and agricultural produce can become products in a commercial sense, thus helping farmers earn more, Wei said.

As China is pressing ahead with rural revitalization, the importance of big data will play out in terms of revitalizing rural industry, culture and ecology. Song Changqing, executive deputy director of the Agricultural Big Data Research Center at Shandong Agricultural University, said that the priority of rural revitalization is to stimulate industries.

China has a vast territory and the industrial forms of agriculture vary from each other. At a macro level, using modern IT technologies such as big data to effectively allocate resources including technology, talent and finance based on industrial forms is necessary for revitalizing agricultural industries. From a micro perspective, advanced IT technologies will play a unique role in realizing precision agriculture production, establishing a traceability system for food safety covering the whole industry chain of agricultural products, preventing natural disasters, controlling animal and plant diseases, and growing brand awareness, Song said.

For cultural and ecological revitalization in rural areas, Song said that big data can enhance precision in information publicity and service based on the needs of rural residents so that they can enjoy modern life and share the benefits brought by informatization. Using data to drive the transformation of rural ecological value into economic value can better meet the goal of turning “lucid waters and lush mountains” into “invaluable assets.”

(edited by SHAO YIJIA)