The Rural Green Development Seminar, one of the events celebrating the 2021 Chinese Farmers' Harvest Festival, was held in Deyang, Southwest China’s Sichuan province, on Sept 22. Participants and experts at the seminar discussed agricultural transformation and agricultural green development.

With the acceleration of green agricultural development, the supply capacity of green and high-quality agricultural products has improved over recent years. However, due to the extensive modes of agricultural development, the supply of green agricultural products has not yet met upgraded consumption demands.

Beginning in 2021, an agricultural production improvement program featuring breed cultivation, quality improvement, brand building and standardized production was launched to promote green agricultural development.

"It is an important and urgent task to strengthen systematic research into green agricultural development standardization," said Yu Xinrong, former deputy secretary of the leading Party members’ group, deputy minister of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs of the People’s Republic of China and chairman of the China Agricultural Green Development Research Association.

Adhering to the concept of green development, green agricultural standardization refers to formulating and implementing consistent standards for the entire process of agricultural production by adopting digital and intellectual means to achieve the best economic, social and ecological benefits.

"The green standardization construction in agriculture is the basic requirement for agricultural transformation in China. More effort should be made to raise awareness, conduct in-depth theoretical research, and promote systematic, legal and technical system construction so as to advance agricultural green standardization and serve rural revitalization and agricultural modernization," Yu said.

Green standardization of agriculture should apply to the entire industrial chain before, during and after production, and should cover the whole process of agricultural production, processing, and circulation of all agricultural products from farmland to table.

"We strive to promote the use of digital information technologies in agriculture, rural areas and farmers, apply the new information technologies of remote sensing, the Internet of Things, big data, and cloud computing in comprehensive digital transformation and upgrades in rural areas, give play to the role of integration of digital technology and green technology, and promote the coordinated development of production, life, and ecological environment,” said Wu Wenbin, deputy director of the Institute of Agricultural Resources and Regional Planning of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences.

With digital information technology data monitoring and early warning as well as optimization of resource allocation can be brought into full play, allowing data to play its role in production, marketing, natural disaster prevention, animal and plant disease prevention and control, input costs reduction, and improvement of quality and safety of agricultural products, Wu said.

Unmanned spraying robots, for example, can be used to spray pesticides based on topographic maps, precise positions of fruit trees, and prescriptions for diseases and insect pests. The unmanned intelligent spraying helps improve the efficiency of pesticide utilization and avoids pesticide poisoning incidents.

The seminar was hosted by the steering committee of the Chinese Farmers' Harvest Festival, and co-organized by the China Agricultural Green Development Research Association, the Sichuan Provincial Department of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, and the Deyang Municipal People's Government.