Advanced models and successful experiences of agricultural digital transformation at home and abroadAdvanced models and successful experiences of agricultural digital transformation at home and abroad

Agriculture is an important guarantee for economic stability and social harmony, and it serves as the foundation for the healthy and sustainable development of a country. In the context of digitalization, the digital transformation of agriculture holds significant importance in enhancing the quality and safety of agricultural products, promoting the integration of the digital economy and rural industries, and facilitating the sustainable development of rural agriculture. Currently, the country attaches great importance to the development of agricultural digitalization, demanding the vigorous development of digital agriculture and the advancement of agricultural digital transformation. To this end, we can actively learn from and summarize the models of agricultural digital transformation in developed countries such as Europe, America, and Japan, as well as the experiences of some Chinese internet enterprises in deeply integrating with agriculture and promoting agricultural digital transformation, with the aim of advancing the digital transformation of agriculture in China.

1. Advanced Models of Agricultural Digital Transformation Abroad The "Research-Education-Promotion" Trinitarian Agricultural Digitalization Model in the United States The United States is one of the first countries to advance the process of agricultural digitalization, gradually forming a "trinitarian" agricultural model, namely "research + education + promotion".
Specifically, this model can be divided into three levels from top to bottom: The first level consists of agricultural extension organizations affiliated with the federal government, which are responsible for coordinating agricultural technology extension nationwide. The second level comprises state extension organizations affiliated with the agricultural colleges of state universities. Under the guidance of the first level, they formulate, organize, and implement specific agricultural technology extension plans for each state, and provide information consultation, technical support, and troubleshooting services to the next level. The third level consists of county extension offices, which are responsible for implementing agricultural project extension work at the local level. The "three-in-one" model has promoted the development of informatization and intelligence throughout the entire agricultural process in the United States.
In the agricultural production process, on the one hand, farmers utilize technologies such as agricultural big data, the Internet of Things, and artificial intelligence developed by scientific and technological institutions to gain a better understanding of the conditions of farmland and crops, achieve precision agriculture, and optimize the allocation of agricultural resources. On the other hand, automation and robotic technologies are also widely applied in agricultural production, enhancing the efficiency and precision of agricultural operations.
In the management and operation phase, the Internet and big data assist farmers in grasping the trends of agricultural products both domestically and internationally, enabling them to make better decisions. In the sales and distribution phase, the B2C e-commerce model is adopted, with transactions completed on agricultural Internet sales platforms, achieving precise matching between supply and demand.

The Netherlands' "Chain Strategy Action Plan" Model The Netherlands possesses inherent disadvantages in its natural conditions for agricultural development, including a small land area, limited land resources, high latitude, low temperature, insufficient sunshine, and low terrain. One-quarter of its land area is below the average sea level, making it prone to land salinization due to seawater inundation. To address these challenges, the Netherlands has integrated agriculture with advanced technology, pioneering the path of agricultural informatization.
Today, the Netherlands, with its land area of over 40,000 square kilometers, stands as the world's second-largest agricultural exporter. The Netherlands' remarkable achievement of "a small country with great achievements" is primarily attributed to its mature digital modern agricultural model, namely the "Chain Strategy Action Plan" model.
The "Chain Strategy Action Plan" of the Netherlands focuses on the construction of the entire agricultural industry chain, striving to promote the informatization, specialization, and large-scale production of agriculture, and deepen the coordination and integration mechanism within the agricultural industry chain. It closely links the production, supply, and sales of agricultural products, achieving deep integration and coordinated development in the agricultural, industrial, and commercial fields, thereby establishing a cooperation model of shared risks and benefits. Under this model, all participating entities share the external economic effects brought by the agglomeration of the industry chain, promoting the value-added and sustainable development of the overall industry chain.
The informatization model of the grape industry in Burgundy, France France boasts excellent natural conditions for agricultural development, possessing some of the most fertile land in Europe. With a temperate marine climate that remains mild throughout the year, and rivers crisscrossing the region, it is well-suited for irrigation. Among all agricultural clusters, grape cultivation has the longest history, and the Burgundy wine-producing region is a world-renowned grape industrial park.
The Burgundy wine-producing region follows a unique production model: Firstly, the French government plays a central leading role in the field of public agricultural services, taking the lead in building large-scale grape planting technology parks, investing in the construction of related infrastructure, and providing policy support such as tax incentives and financial subsidies. At the same time, it also plays a supervisory and regulatory role, regularly disclosing relevant information. The French Ministry of Agriculture is responsible for analyzing price fluctuations of bulk commodities and agricultural products, providing timely and forward-looking production guidance and suggestions to farmers. In addition to the existing agricultural information database, it is also committed to building a comprehensive "big agriculture" data system. The information collection, integration, and release of this data system are mainly undertaken by agricultural departments at all levels, and farmers can obtain comprehensive agricultural market dynamics through online platforms.
Secondly, French agricultural cooperative organizations play a significant role in vineyard management, providing farmers with information on agricultural technology, farm management, and other aspects.
Lastly, private enterprises serve as an important supplementary force, effectively eliminating the worries of numerous farmers in the production process by providing personalized and customized services, thereby promoting the improvement of agricultural production efficiency.
The Development Model of Smart Information Agriculture in Japan Japan has a small land area, with numerous mountains and hills, and a large demand for food. Coupled with a serious aging population problem, agricultural development lacks labor. After years of exploration, the Japanese government and private institutions have found a "feasible" path - smart information agriculture.
The main characteristics of intelligent information agriculture are as follows: Firstly, it achieves large-scale production with minimal human labor. All operational procedures in intelligent agriculture are automated, driving the improvement of productivity.
Secondly, we should enhance the quality of crops and increase the yield of agricultural products. By utilizing various sensors to collect data from farmland and crops and conducting big data analysis, for instance, extracting data on moisture, pesticide, and fertilizer composition from the soil, and combining this with the production status of crops to analyze whether fertilization or pesticide spraying is necessary.
Thirdly, utilize information technology equipment to analyze crop data, transforming "experience" into "data".
Fourth, liberate labor from dangerous and exhausting agricultural work. Develop wearable assistive devices to reduce physical burden, or utilize robots to handle dangerous agricultural tasks that may pose harm to humans, such as pesticide spraying. Fifth, achieve full process transparency, ensure the safety of agricultural products, and provide peace of mind to consumers.

Successful Practice of Deep Integration between Domestic Agriculture and Informatization The deep integration of informatization and agriculture has become the mainstream trend of agricultural development in China. In recent years, e-commerce enterprises such as Alibaba, JD.com, and Pinduoduo have actively integrated with agriculture, embarking on a path of integrated development between e-commerce and agriculture.
Alibaba Group's digital agriculture integrates various aspects, characterized by Alibaba Cloud's AIOT empowering agricultural production, agricultural enterprise organization, and brand marketing. It provides data-driven innovation for the "agriculture-land-product" scenario in agriculture.
This model has the following characteristics: First, it realizes the digitization of farm information, leveraging Internet of Things (IoT) technology to empower the entire agricultural production process and achieve comprehensive digital management of farms. Second, it achieves collaborative management of parks, establishing a collaborative management system supported by information technology, creating an integrated agricultural industry chain, and realizing the sharing of industrial resources. Third, it provides agricultural meteorological services, offering detailed meteorological data for historical, current, and future time periods at the county level, spanning the entire planting cycle. Fourth, it provides blockchain traceability services, transmitting the full-chain information of agricultural products to the blockchain and creating a unique "origin identity card" for each agricultural product. Fifth, it facilitates the connection between production and marketing, aggregating the advantages of Alibaba's e-commerce ecosystem and origin brands, helping high-quality agricultural products move up the supply chain and enhancing consumer brand awareness. Sixth, it integrates Alibaba's ecological capabilities, gathering vast amounts of agricultural industry chain data to provide comprehensive scheduling support for modern agricultural development and industrial integration.
The integrated supply chain model for digital agricultural products, JD Farm, is committed to the mission of "Ecological Agriculture, Healthy Table". It has established a supply chain service model for production, supply, and marketing, encompassing "big data platform - planting management services - farm management improvement services - post-harvest processing services - brand empowerment services - marketing planning services - one-stop product sales services".
The approach of JD Farm is as follows: First, it provides comprehensive and full-process assistance to county-level agricultural specialty industries to achieve digitalization, intelligence, standardization, e-commerce, and brand development. It collaborates with numerous industry partners to establish a "three-wheel drive" service model based on county governments, leading enterprises, and JD; second, by taking the county as a unit and the village as a foothold, and relying on the high-quality development of specialty industries, it promotes the implementation of digital agricultural industry chain projects; third, it forms a sustainable development mechanism guided by the government and operated by the market, further tapping into and expanding the potential of the lower-tier market.
Pinduoduo's "Agricultural Cloud Initiative" for the development model of digital new farmers focuses on investing advantageous resources to accelerate the integration of 100 agricultural industrial belts across the country into the cloud, creating more resilient and competitive digital agricultural industrial belts. Regions with characteristic agricultural industry development, such as Kunming in Yunnan, Nanning in Guangxi, Xiapu in Fujian, Weifang and Shouguang in Shandong, are among the first batch of agricultural industrial belts that Pinduoduo focuses on supporting for digitalization, and are also pioneering areas for its digital new farmer development model.
The specific measures are as follows: First, adopting a "zero commission" approach to facilitate the upgrading of agricultural industrial belts from production-to-sales docking to direct production-to-sales connection, benefiting farmers and consumers; second, pooling advantageous resources to promote the application of "group buying" in flash sales and billions of subsidies, actively connecting with large traffic support such as agricultural product festivals and new year goods festivals, stimulating new digital consumption on the demand side, and achieving new digital supply in key agricultural industrial belt construction; third, connecting local supply chains to "cloud" in batches, holding special investment attraction training sessions, and providing small-scale targeted coaching for outstanding new farmers; fourth, building a dedicated agricultural product logistics system for storage and cold chain for merchants in agricultural industrial belts, providing full-chain agricultural product upstream infrastructure services; fifth, through continuous centralized exposure on the platform, fresh agricultural product category days, and omnichannel promotion, creating hundreds of agricultural specialty product brands, promoting the standardized, branded, and digital development of characteristic agricultural industrial belts.

Drawing on the experience of advanced models of agricultural digital transformation at home and abroad, we should strengthen policy support and institutional guarantees. Policy support is the cornerstone of agricultural digitalization development. The introduction of policies supporting the development of digital agriculture and the promulgation of relevant laws and regulations have created a favorable environment for the development of digital agriculture. For example, in the 1930s, the US government introduced the Rural Electrification Act, aiming to build rural electrical infrastructure. Subsequently, the US successively issued policy plans such as the National Information Infrastructure Plan, the Agricultural Security and Rural Investment Act, and the Federal Agricultural Improvement and Reform Act, providing favorable institutional guarantees for agricultural informatization. Another example is in the Burgundy region, where the French government invested a large amount of funds to guide the establishment of close cooperative relationships between wine research and development institutions, universities, and enterprises. At the same time, a series of laws and regulations for the wine industry were formulated, a strict wine standardization system was implemented, and a digital management system for wine grading and quality control was established and improved.
Emphasizing information technology to boost agriculture. The empowerment of information technology is the key to driving the digital transformation of traditional agriculture. For instance, since the 1950s, the Netherlands has been vigorously developing facility agriculture. All greenhouses in the Netherlands have achieved automated control over lighting, heating, fertilization, CO2 supplementation, as well as mechanized harvesting and monitoring. Farmers' field prevention and control are all based on big data analysis, with global positioning systems, satellite identification, molecular identification, DNA identification, and other technologies applied in agriculture. Advanced agricultural knowledge and technology, coupled with high automation, have enabled the Netherlands to achieve not only high crop yields but also high crop quality. The development of intelligent information agriculture in Japan is also supported by a series of information technologies. For example, the development of the KSAS system enables mobile phones and computers to be networked, allowing for monitoring of various aspects through the cloud; the use of paddy field sensors to monitor water level, water temperature, soil temperature, air humidity and temperature in real time, and adjust the water level accordingly; and the promotion of global positioning systems, coupled with agricultural machinery for navigation, to achieve higher precision positioning operations.
Promote the construction of a digital agriculture talent team. Digital agriculture talents are crucial support for the digital transformation of agriculture. According to the 2023 agricultural census data in the United States, over 90% of farmers have a high school degree or above. To encourage schools and research institutions to actively participate in talent cultivation, the United States has established statutory funds to promote the cultivation of new farmers and provide sufficient talent reserves for the development of digital agriculture. The success of Pinduoduo's digital new farmer model in Chinese enterprises also benefits from the small-scale and targeted transformation training provided to outstanding new farmers.
Emphasizing the social supply of agricultural digital services In 1874, the Netherlands established consumer cooperatives, which promoted the socialization of agriculture. As consumer cooperatives moved from decentralization to centralization, their comprehensiveness and professionalism gradually increased. The Netherlands has built a sound, efficient, and convenient agricultural digital service system that covers all aspects of agricultural production, supply, and sales, providing better services for agricultural production. In France, the government provides significant support to agricultural cooperative organizations in various fields such as taxation and funding, in order to improve the social supply system of agricultural digital services.
Building a digital agricultural brand: Utilizing digital means to promote the shaping of agricultural brands is also an important experience in the success of the aforementioned numerous models. For example, relying on the brand digitalization strategy, the Burgundy wine brand in France has gained a global reputation. The French government and private institutions have vigorously built digital infrastructure, Internet of Things systems, and established a wine big data platform to analyze data on production, circulation, and consumption, optimizing production and marketing strategies; applying blockchain technology to achieve full traceability of wine products, enhancing consumer trust; developing tools such as agricultural product traceability apps to provide customized services according to consumer needs, thereby enhancing user brand recognition; on the other hand, utilizing e-commerce platforms, social media, and other channels to build an integrated online and offline marketing channel, enhancing brand influence.