Invited by ZJU Innovation Team of Digital Farming & Agricultural Internet of Things, Cornell University Professor Norman R. Scott, who is also a Member of the US National Academy of Engineering, visited BEFS on March 24^th, 2018. He was warmly received by College Dean Prof. He Yong, CPC Secretary Ms. Wang Xiaoyan and Vice Dean Prof. Liu Donghong. Prof. Norman R. Scott and BEFS leaders had a full discussion on the all-round cooperation of teaching and research work between ZJU and Cornell.

At 9 am, Prof. Norman R. Scott gave an academic report entitled “SmartAg: Creating the Future in Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources”. The lecture hall was fully packed with BEFS faculties and students.

Prof. Norman R. Scott gave a free discussion of Intelligent Agriculture’s development and future from 6 respects including “the definition of intelligent agriculture”, “sustainability in agriculture”, “the motivation of traditional agriculture transforming to intelligent agriculture”, “how to combine science engineering technology with agriculture”, “the future full industry chain of agriculture” as well as “intelligent agriculture’s impact on the future”.

Prof. Norman R. Scott started with the introduction to the concept of intelligent agriculture. He believes that intelligent agriculture is a combination of scientific engineering technology and food production chain. The food production chain alone has various links including food production, food engineering, food package and food delivery, all of which contain important engineering application problems and scientific research problems to be solved. Prof. Norman R. Scott demonstrated the important impacts of intelligent agriculture and sustainable concept on agriculture, food and natural resources with special emphasis on the diverse new foods (including artificial proteins and other organic foods)  developed by the rapid development of biotechnology. He also pointed out that scientific research has not only pushed forward the development of intelligent agriculture, but also created motivation for the transformation from traditional agriculture to intelligent agriculture; the rapid development of biotechnology has been increasingly expanding people’s life space and stimulating the birth of new food production system to formulate the future’s food production system, which further pushes forward the globalization of intellectual agriculture. Speaking of the broad implementation of technology in agricultural internet of things, Prof. Norman R. Scott resembled the agricultural big data as soil and petrol in the new era and the “infrastructure construction” in the field of agriculture, which further proves its essential impacts on intellectual agriculture’s application. He believes that the rapid development of intellectual agriculture has put forward higher requirements on the response and support of agricultural big data. Relying on agricultural big data, we will be able to realize the intellectual management of intelligent agriculture’s production system in a scientific manner. Prof. Norman R. Scott introduced the concept map of "green city", which combines agriculture with urban construction, and the functional modules and operation flow chart of future small-scale intelligent agriculture. “System makes it possible, but people make it happen”, says Prof. Norman R. Scott encouraging us to make a progress and make a difference in academic study and innovative application.

After the report, Prof. Norman R. Scott and BEFS professors and students exchanged thoughts on the most advanced questions in the academic research and engineering application of intellectual agriculture.