The United States is a typical modern agricultural country in the world. About 3.5 million people are directly engaged in agricultural production. It not only feeds 300 million Americans, but also becomes the world's largest exporter of agricultural products. The full mechanization and rapid development of digital technology have laid a solid foundation for the development of smart agriculture. At present, the United States has formed a smart agricultural production system with fine and large-scale development. 69.6% of farms use sensors to collect data, and agricultural robots are applied to agricultural production such as sowing, spraying and harvesting.

As the largest country of agricultural UAV spraying in the world, Japan mainly takes the Agricultural Internet of things as the information source, applies a large number of agricultural robots, and constantly pursues labor-saving and refinement of agricultural production to solve the problem of agricultural labor shortage.

The characteristics of smart agriculture in developed countries such as Europe, America and Japan are to carry out theoretical and practical research on smart agriculture according to the development trend of modern agriculture and in combination with the actual situation of domestic agricultural production. Under the support of modern information technology, give full play to the role of intelligent agricultural equipment, and take crops soil environment meteorology equipment personnel as a whole system by using technologies such as Internet of things, artificial intelligence, big data and 5g, Realize intelligent management aiming at the overall optimization of the system.

Developed countries have the following experience in the R & D and application of smart agricultural technology, which is worthy of our reference.

First, take improving productivity as the starting point and solving the bottleneck of agricultural production as the starting point. The Netherlands, Israel and other countries are seriously short of fresh water resources. They vigorously develop facility agriculture and implement soilless cultivation and fine spray drip irrigation system. With the aging and serious shortage of agricultural labor force, Japan has vigorously developed agricultural UAVs and agricultural robots to greatly improve operation efficiency. Southern China is also facing labor shortage and inorganic availability of agriculture in Hilly and mountainous areas. We should develop multi-functional small-scale operation equipment, realize machine replacement and solve the problem of mechanized operation in Hilly and mountainous areas. The main grain producing areas should implement the whole process mechanization to improve labor productivity. Economically developed areas can study the establishment of farms, orchards, pastures and fishing grounds with no or few people, so as to improve the level of agricultural modernization.

Second, the implementation of standardized planning and operation is the basis and condition for the development of smart agriculture. The standardized planning and fine management of farmland, orchards and pastures in developed countries have created conditions for the large-scale and efficient use of intelligent agricultural equipment, and greatly improved the operation efficiency, yield and quality. China's farmland, orchards and pastures need to promote standardization planning as soon as possible, formulate standardized operation specifications, and develop high-efficiency supporting operation equipment to create conditions for large-scale mechanized operation.

Third, make full use of modern science and technology to insert scientific and technological wings into agriculture. Foreign countries make extensive use of space technology and meteorological data to achieve rapid and accurate acquisition and intelligent management of farmland information. With the development of Internet of things, big data and 5g technology, especially the application of high-resolution satellite and Beidou Positioning System, it is expected to achieve real-time and dynamic acquisition of crop, animal and plant growth information, dynamic regulation of temperature, humidity and light according to crop growth needs, and precise spraying of fertilizer and water medicine.

(He Yong, director of digital agriculture and rural research center of Zhejiang University)