China's Smart Agriculture Expands Since 2026 but Faces Core Technology and Talent Gaps

Since 2026, smart agriculture has developed rapidly and has been integrated into agricultural production across various regions. Smart agriculture is a product of the deep integration of digital technology and agriculture. At present, its main characteristics include an increasingly close relationship between production methods and data. Smart agriculture uses the Internet of Things, big data, and other technologies to collect real-time information on environmental factors and crop growth conditions, and converts this into production decisions. In Shouguang, Shandong province, intelligent greenhouses have been applied to agricultural production, allowing farmers to carry out farming operations in the cloud.

Smart agriculture closely integrates production, processing, distribution, and sales, promoting the integrated development of the primary, secondary, and tertiary industries. The future farms built in Zhejiang have achieved automated production, intelligent management, and online services, and use agricultural e-commerce platforms to sell agricultural products directly to consumers. Smart agriculture uses technological means to address problems such as fragmented land and labor loss, and explores optimized combinations of production factors including land, labor, capital, and data. In the hilly and mountainous areas of Sichuan, where the terrain is relatively complex, intelligent agricultural machinery using BeiDou navigation can carry out centimeter-level rice transplanting and harvesting on irregular plots, thereby improving land utilization.

The development of smart agriculture involves agricultural production and operation entities and has given rise to a group of new farmers. At present, in deepening its application, smart agriculture faces shortcomings including weak self-reliance in core technologies, an incomplete standards system, an obvious urban-rural digital divide, and a shortage of interdisciplinary talent. Plans and arrangements such as the National Smart Agriculture Action Plan (2024-2028) have already been issued.