On November 18-19, the First Conference on Big Data in Agriculture and Rural Areas was held at the National Institute of Southern Propagation of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (NISPAS) in Yazhou Bay Science and Technology City, Sanya. Over 180 experts and scholars from agricultural research institutes and key universities in major provinces (municipalities) and autonomous regions of China, along with leaders of governmental management departments and entrepreneurs, engaged in extensive academic exchanges on topics such as the construction of big data resources in agriculture and rural areas, governance, scientific and technological frontiers, and the innovative application of big data.

Xiong Hang, Vice President of the Macro Agricultural Research Institute (MARI) at Huazhong Agricultural University, and Lu Xuran attended the conference. In the seminar on the scientific and technological frontiers of agricultural and rural big data, Xiong Hang delivered a report titled “Standardization of Agricultural and Rural Socio-Economic Data,” which introduced the current status of agricultural and rural socio-economic data and collection methods, and pointed out the problems and solutions to the current questionnaire survey method—specifically, the standardized definition, expression, and coding of questionnaire data.

In the Data Publishing Forum, Xiong Hang presented a report titled “Agricultural and Rural Socio-Economic Data Publishing: Current Situation, Challenges and Prospects,” proposing that the current challenges in data publishing could be addressed through the establishment of data standards, cross-dataset development, and integration with authoritative data-sharing platforms.

Written by Xuran Lu

Reviewed by Hang Xiong