Abstract:
Digital technology transformation has become the core driving force to reshape agricultural production methods and business models. Since China put forward the “Internet+” strategy in 2015, the application of digital technology in agricultural production has entered a rapid development stage, and related research has shown explosive growth. In this paper, we first systematically sort out the development stage and direction of the application of digital technology in agriculture. Secondly, we analyze the theoretical mechanism of digital technology affecting the development of agriculture from four aspects: technological advancement, capital support, data resources, and cost advantage. Thirdly, we analyze the effects generated by the application of digital technology in agriculture from three perspectives: disease and pest control, traceability of agricultural products, and agricultural product marketing. Lastly, we sum up the research progress of digital technology application in agriculture. The application process of digital technology in agricultural development presents a staged pattern and the development direction has a structural hierarchy. Technological advancement provides a driving force for agricultural development and promotes the innovation of the agricultural model; capital support solves the problem of capital demand faced by agricultural development by breaking the financing constraints; the application of digital technology in agriculture generates a large amount of data resources, which enable the digital production and operation of agriculture; digital technology eases the spatio-temporal limitations and information asymmetric constraints of agricultural development, thereby reducing the costs of production, circulation, transaction, and information acquisition in agriculture. The application of modern agricultural information technologies such as geographic information systems, remote sensing, sensing, global positioning systems, and mobile Internet enables the real-time monitoring and early warning of pests and diseases; the application of digital technology in precision pesticide application and pest control is reflected in variable spraying technology, unmanned aerial vehicle-based pesticide application, and automated pesticide application system. In terms of agricultural product traceability, the agricultural product traceability system is mainly constructed based on the Hyperledger Fabric blockchain platform, which is further combined with IoT technology to form an agricultural product traceability system combining blockchain technology and IoT technology. In terms of agricultural product marketing, the combination of short video + Internet celebrity + live broadcasting + e-commerce has become a new mode of agricultural product marketing. Finally, this paper makes an outlook on the future research focuses and puts forward suggestions for the application of digital technology in agriculture, including focusing on scientific and technological innovation and algorithm optimization, improving infrastructure, optimizing data governance, building a collaborative operation and maintenance platform and a more intelligent, precise and economical digital plant protection system, conducting in-depth research to clarify the mechanism of the traceability system architecture, and carrying out research on the supervision of platforms, laws, and regulations. The research results are expected to provide ideas and methods for the basic research of digital technology and its application in agriculture.