Dr. Aihemaitijiang Rouzi

10 February 2020

The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs and the Central Cyber Security and Information Committee of China jointly published the on December 25th, 2019 which will provide a blueprint for digitalization of agriculture and rural areas.

The “plan” outlines five important goals.

First, establish a basic data source system with main focus on natural agricultural resources, agricultural cropping, rural collective capital, rural housing, rural and new rural marketing integration as five main data points which will be the basis of rural development.

Second, improve the digitalization of production and sale, accelerate digitalization of cropping, animal husbandry, fishery and diversification of new industries, covering full process of quality control and improve digital agriculture productivity.

Third is to promote the digital transformation of management and services, establish and improve rural management decision-making  support systems and  early-warning systems for the entire industrial chain of important agricultural products, build a digital agricultural rural service system, an intelligent monitoring system for rural human settlements, and a digital rural governance system to promote rural governance.

Fourth is to strengthen key technology and innovation of equipment, strengthen key shareable technology research, strengthen strategic advanced technology and technology integration, applications and demonstrations, accelerate the development of agricultural artificial intelligence research development, and improve the leading role of the digital development.

Fifth, strengthen the construction of major engineering facilities, implement major national agricultural and rural big data centers, agricultural and rural aerial-ground integrated observation systems, and national digital agriculture and rural innovation, and other major engineering projects to enhance the support capacity of digital agriculture and rural development.