Exploration and development prospect of eco-unmanned farm modes

Agricultural production is always built on the basis of excessive pesticide and chemical fertilizer input in China, which leads to the imbalance of farmland ecological environment and is not conducive to the sustainable development of agriculture. Meanwhile, the shortage of agricultural population is becoming increasingly prominent, so it is imperative to seek an ecological, efficient and intelligent agricultural modes. Based on years of practice and exploration, the author's team built China's first eco-unmanned farm in Zibo, Shandong Province, and put forward the mode and development concept of "eco-unmanned farm". This article concluded that pesticides, fertilizers and soil farming methods have caused the most serious adverse effects on farmland ecosystems. To solve these problems, a series of unmanned operation methods and modes were used to carry out ecological management and transformation of the farmland ecosystem to realize the sustainable development of agricultural production. After that, functions of the automatic collection and processing of farmland information, scientific decision-making and remote control of unmanned agricultural machines were realized through the integration of air and ground agricultural information acquisition, ground-air integrated unmanned agricultural machinery cooperative operation, and the construction of a smart cloud brain capable of fully autonomous decision-making. Eco-unmanned farms cover two parts: ecological management and unmanned operations. The connotation of ecological management includes precise spraying of pesticides and fertilizers, ecological fertile soil and the construction of circular ecosystems. The connotation of unmanned operation includes intelligent perception of farm information, accurate analysis of big data, scientific decision-making with artificial intelligence, positioning and navigation of satellite systems, and collaborative operations between agricultural machinery. The eco-unmanned farm mode implements ecological management of farmland through unmanned operation methods, thereby organically combining ecological agriculture with unmanned farms. Traditional ecological agriculture cannot meet the development needs of modern high-efficiency agriculture. Therefore, unmanned operation methods for ecological management were applied to reduce the use of pesticides and fertilizers, and finally achieved a relatively ecological state. Precision spraying refers to spraying on-demand using unmanned ground and aerial precision spraying technology and equipment based on the spraying prescription map generated based on farmland crop information. The construction of a material-recycling farmland ecosystem is to recycle agricultural wastes such as straws through planting, breeding and farming, as well as increasing biodiversity. Ecological fertile soil refers to the use of ecological mechanization technology and methods to simplify farming, improve the ecological environment and soil structure, scientifically treat and efficiently use straw in the field, and reduce the use of pesticides and fertilizers. The unmanned farm is the ultimate form of "Replacing Humans with Machines". It has three basic elements: perception, decision-making and execution, which corresponds to the human nervous system. The Internet of Things replaces human perception organs; big data and artificial intelligence form a smart cloud brain, replaces the human brain; unmanned agricultural equipment replaces manned agricultural machinery that requires human limbs to participate in execution. The smart cloud brain is the most important "organ" of the unmanned farm and the development degree of the smart cloud brain determines the degree of the unmanned farm's intelligence. The eco-unmanned farm mode has application scenarios such as smart field, smart orchard, smart greenhouse, smart fishery, and smart pasture. However, its core idea is always the deep integration of ecological development concepts with intelligent equipment and information technology. The technical mode of eco-unmanned farm needs to be equipped with corresponding support systems according to local conditions in different application scenarios. The article summarized the key technologies and modes of eco-unmanned farms, and proposed the implementation connotation of the eco-unmanned farm mode, in order to provide valuable information for the development of future agriculture, smart agriculture, and the promotion of high-quality development of agricultural and rural modernization.