Practice, Promotion and Perspective of Smart Agriculture in China

Smart agriculture uses new generation technologies, such as the Internet of Things, big data, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and blockchain to further refine and improve the intelligence of agricultural production. China considers smart agriculture as an important engine to promote high-quality agricultural and rural development. This chapter reviews the recent practices of smart agriculture with a case study in Zhejiang Province as well as the supporting framework and policies of smart agriculture. The chapter then summarizes the opportunities and challenges of smart agriculture and forecasts the future direction of agricultural technology and policies. Finally, the study offers suggestions for the acceleration of agricultural and rural development using high-quality smart technologies. The findings confirm that smart agriculture has become an important part of the national economy, although it is still in its infancy. Both the national and regional authorities of China have introduced policies favoring the development of smart agriculture. This has resulted in its high popularization, with perfect industrial chains and many large-scale enterprises involved in increasing the country’s self-sufficiency in production and technology. While these policies have several positive effects on rural telecommunication and technology, smart agriculture faces certain constrains in terms of R&D capability, fiscal investment, farmer capacity, and talent training. By taking appropriate measures for these weak areas under unified planning, the agricultural and rural economic growth of China can be accelerated using high technologies.