Peng­gong digital farm in Shilai vil­lage, Pingyao town, Yuhang dis­trict has become one of Hang­zhou's most pop­u­lar new vis­itor des­tin­a­tions.

Vast stretches of rice pad­dies extend across the farm, where agri­cul­tural products includ­ing blue­ber­ries, straw­ber­ries, toma­toes and leafy greens are grown and har­ves­ted accord­ing to the sea­sons.

Dong Jian­feng, a self-described "half coder", leads a team whose mem­bers have an aver­age age of 28 in revo­lu­tion­iz­ing agri­cul­tural pro­duc­tion. Robotic dogs patrol the fields, soil sensors auto­mat­ic­ally activ­ate smart irrig­a­tion sys­tems, and an arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence sys­tem is used to dia­gnose crop dis­eases and pest infest­a­tions.

In just two years, the team has built a "future farm" and expor­ted this oper­at­ing model to more than 10 agri­cul­tural bases nation­wide.

For young new­comers with zero farm­ing exper­i­ence to become suc­cess­ful grow­ers, they must rely on another core product gen­er­ated by the farm: agri­cul­tural data.

"Exper­i­ence-based farm­ing rely­ing solely on manual labor can no longer meet the demands of mod­ern agri­cul­tural pro­duc­tion. For instance, when to fer­til­ize, what type of fer­til­izer to apply and in what quant­ity, as well as the optimal tem­per­at­ure and humid­ity for fruit growth — all these factors need to be quan­ti­fied into data," Dong said.

As a tech­no­logy spe­cial­ist by pro­fes­sion, Dong left Zhiji­ang Labor­at­ory in 2019 and set him­self a goal: to build an agri­cul­tural sec­tor where young people would be will­ing to pur­sue lifelong careers.

Under the farm's data-driven agri­cul­tural decision-mak­ing sys­tem, a suite of self-developed soft­ware tools works along­side equip­ment such as integ­rated water and fer­til­izer sup­ply units, met­eor­o­lo­gical sensors and auto­mated green­house facil­it­ies. As it car­ries out agri­cul­tural pro­duc­tion, the farm also gen­er­ates and mod­els large volumes of data.

Front­line work­ers col­lect and sub­mit inform­a­tion dur­ing their daily farm­ing activ­it­ies. Pro­cessed by agri­cul­tural data mod­els cov­er­ing plant growth, farm man­age­ment and fin­ance, the data auto­mat­ic­ally gen­er­ate ana­lyt­ical reports. These reports enable quant­it­at­ive mon­it­or­ing and pre­cise trace­ab­il­ity throughout pro­duc­tion, facil­it­ate water and fer­til­izer man­age­ment and tar­geted plant pro­tec­tion, and make decisions for future farm­ing activ­it­ies.

For a long time, the exodus of young people to cit­ies has plagued many rural areas. Yuhang dis­trict is striv­ing to break this cycle by offer­ing all-in-one, full-cycle ser­vices for rural tal­ents cov­er­ing set­tle­ment, career growth and long-term devel­op­ment.

Early sum­mer marks the begin­ning of the blue­berry har­vest. Inside the berry-pro­cessing work­shop at the farm, more than 10 local stay-at-home moth­ers sort and pack­age fresh fruit along an orderly pro­duc­tion line.

Blue­ber­ries have an extremely short shelf life, cre­at­ing ser­i­ous labor short­ages dur­ing the peak har­vest period. Farms struggle to recruit tem­por­ary work­ers and face high labor costs, while many moth­ers in the area are unable to accept full-time jobs due to child­care respons­ib­il­it­ies.

To address this mis­match between labor sup­ply and demand, the Pingyao town labor mar­ket took pro­act­ive action. Its staff mem­bers vis­ited local agri­cul­tural oper­at­ors to tally sea­sonal staff­ing needs, work­ing hours and job require­ments. They also con­duc­ted house­hold sur­veys to identify stay-at-home moth­ers' avail­ab­il­ity and employ­ment pref­er­ences.

Through a ded­ic­ated chan­nel on its ser­vice plat­form, the mar­ket quickly assembled a stable fruit­pro­cessing team of local moth­ers, effect­ively solv­ing the farm's sea­sonal labor short­age.

Wang Hongyin, head of the Yuhang dis­trict bur­eau of agri­cul­ture and rural affairs, said that Yuhang takes a patient, long-term approach to cul­tiv­at­ing tal­ent.

"Attract­ing tal­ent is not a one or two-year project, but a sus­tained, long-term com­mit­ment. Our vis­ion is to turn rural land­scapes into places young people yearn to live and work in," Wang said.