| Development of Smart Agriculture Coping with the 4th Industrial Revolution | |||
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| Author | Kim, Yeanjung | ||
| Views | 94179 | Publication Date | 2018.03.14 |
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Background of Research Starting from the ‘understanding of the 4th industrial revolution’ announced in the Davos Forum in 2016, major advanced nations have led the revolution as per each of their actual circumstances. The U.S. is operating the AMP program being geared up with the cloud service utilizing predominance of the Internet whereas Germany is preparing for the industry 4.0 era, and Japan is promoting the robot revolution as a new strategic industry. It seems a little late but Korea is also rapidly organizing the 4th revolution related technology and system at a governmental level. The agriculture sector also needs to promote the entire system change coping with this enormous trend. Our domestic agriculture industry has suffered from not meeting the crop harvesting plan due to stagnant farm income level, decrease in the self-sufficiency rate of grain, decrease in rural population and aging population, and aggravated climate change. In addition, harvest and production of farm products has not been steady yielding the intensely fluctuating prices and having difficulty securing stable food supply for the citizens and consumers. In order to solve the foregoing issues, it is time that the agriculture industry is in need of strategically considering application of the 4th industrial revolution technologies (IoT, big data, unmanned drone, robot, AI, etc.). Especially it is expected that these technologies are to be applied not only in the stage of production but also distribution, consumption, and forward and backward linked industries in the long run so that the true synergy effect can be realized. It can be an opportunity for the Korean domestic agriculture system to take a leap to another level. Method of Research The methods of this research include documentary survey, collection and analysis of policy data and preceding research data as well as an awareness survey of 331 farmers on smart agriculture. The major contents investigated were level of awareness on smart agriculture, the need of smart agriculture for the future agriculture, level of experience by 4th industrial revolution technology, future intention to use any, and proposal for any policy. In addition, we analyzed AHP analysis, level of technology, and importance of technology by conducting two expert surveys to discover problems of current agriculture and to expand smart agriculture. Co-research was conducted with Wageningen University in the Netherlands. By identifying the current status and circumstances of the Netherlands, which leads smart agriculture, we referred the foregoing for the preparation of policy making on domestic smart agriculture. Result and Implication of Research As for the farmers’ awareness level on the 4th industrial revolution, it is shown that 63.1% of the respondents answered with ‘already knew’ implicating that the level of awareness on the 4th industrial revolution is high. It is also shown that the farmers believe the effect of the 4th industrial revolution is mostly positive, and especially more on the production sector than consumption or agriculture sectors. It is investigated and proved that the level of understanding of robots for agriculture and drones in the 4th industrial revolution related technologies is high whereas that of understanding the technology such as cloud or big data, which does not apply directly to the agriculture site, is low. Next we investigated the level of technology application for the 4th industrial revolution in order to solve the current problems in the agriculture sector. It is shown that increase in productivity, reduction in labor cost, reduction in light and heat expenses, improvement of quality, and management of livestock manure are the major issues in the facility horticulture and livestock industry whereas stability in supply and demand, and efficiency of distribution are issues in agricultural marketing. On the other hand, quality improvement, stability, price stabilization, and consumption trend in the consumption sector are the major issues. It is also shown that the level of the 4th industrial revolution related domestic technology used to solve these outstanding issues is data collection using the IoT, simple big data analysis, and commercial mobile phone applications. Thus it is true that we have not reached the level where comprehensive algorithms, big data analysis, AI, robots, and drones can be practically used. The level of domestic technology on agriculture food, machine, and system is ranked 8th from the 9 major nations while it is 75% of that of the US, perceived to be the best technology nation. In detail, agriculture machine and system is 76.6%, agriculture automation and robot technology 77.2%, farm work machine and system 75.1% in comparison with the best technology nation (US). Given all the foregoing, the level of technology for domestic smart agriculture is 1.5 generation (1st Gen: sensor monitoring, 2nd Gen: optimized algorithm, 3rd Gen: automation stage without human labor) being in pursuit after Japan’s 2nd generation. As a result of expert’s AHP analysis, the most important smart agriculture strategy is ‘training manpower’ followed by ‘R&D’, ‘establishment of data infrastructure’, ‘autonomous farming machine’, and ‘AI robot’ in order. The related infrastructure factors are ranked high rather than the core technologies of the 4th industrial revolution such as big data, AI, etc. On the other hand, as a result of analyzing the policies related to both domestic and overseas 4th industrial revolution in the agriculture industry, it is obvious that we need to establish a system for data ownership, to supplement data security related regulation, to standardize information, and to set a right direction for policy making in order to prepare for potential risks of inaccurate forecast. We believe that we need to promote extensive diffusion, and to establish infrastructure and governance system in order to apply the 4th industrial revolution technology in the domestic agriculture sector and to develop smart agriculture under the basic assumption that we need to solve difficulties of farming sites by priority. We need to prepare legal ground, for instance, regulatory reform and rearrangement of the legal system while the mid and long-term road map is needed for soft landing of the 4th industrial revolution technologies to be applied in the agriculture industry. Furthermore, scaling up and collectivizing agriculture by rearrangement of the dry-field farming infrastructure would be needed to induce easier application of new technology. Training professional manpower and complementation in intellectual property rights are also important factors. Above all domestic farm households should be able to easily apply these relevant technologies. This all can be materialized only if it is accompanied by the effort of eliminating the uncertainty as per introduction of advance technology, and proper promotion. Researchers: Kim Yeonjoong, Park Jiyeon, Park Younggu Research period: 2017. 1. ～ 2017. 10. E-mail address: yjkim@krei.re.kr |
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