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Hydroponically cultivated strawberries are harvested inShangjie, a village in Lingchuan county, the GuangxiZhuang autonomous region, in April. Scientific andtechnological authorities in Guangxi used a special 1.5million yuan ($245,000) fund to support hydroculture in thevillage after a water shortage. Photo by Lu Boan / Xinhua

For Bai Qiangguo, 53, life on the wind-blown plains of central NingxiaHui autonomous region was like being frozen in time: the use ofexcessive pesticides and fertilizers to farm the reluctant land took itstoll on the little fertility there is in the soil. The land became sandierand sandier, increasingly prone to dust storms.

But science is bringing the cycle to an end and giving farmers aharvest for the future.

"Now I work on the land during the day, and use the Internet to sellmy wolfberries in the evening," Bai Qiangguo said. "I never thought Iwould have anything to do with high technology."

Bai and the other farmers who benefited from wolfberry plantingtechnology in Ningxia are only a part of a much more ambitious planof the government to boost agriculture through technology.

"If we bring technology into agriculture in the Ningxia Hui autonomousregion, one of the country's poorest rural regions, we can do it in anyregion in China," Zhang Laiwu, vice-minister of science and technology, told China Daily.

This does not mean just adding new technology into crop planting, or to replacing labor withmachines.

Instead, it is a more complex systematic reform: farmers working in commercialized farms, usinghigh-tech equipment to improve both production and quality of the crop. On top of this, theentire community will benefit through the processing industry, logistics, and financial servicessystem. The result will be that skilled talent will be attracted to agriculture.

"The essential factors in traditional agriculture include land, natural resources, like water andlabor. But now we will integrate new productive factors like technology, modern managementtheory and social services," he said.

Although the methods of industrial agriculture, such as techniques for achieving economies ofscale in production, are common in developed economies and increasingly prevalentworldwide, China's agriculture remained "old-fashioned", Zhang said.

According to the National Bureau of Statistics, the per capita disposable income of urbanresidents was 21,810 yuan ($3,520) in 2011, three times the rural per capita income of 6,977yuan in the same year.

"The gap is much larger than the global average," Zhang said.

To make things worse, more and more farmers are leaving their land for the cities, causinglabor shortages in rural areas. In 2012, China had 262.61 million migrant workers, according tothe bureau.

"The most important thing is to train farmers who are capable of making money fromagriculture," Zhang said.

Between 2009 and 2012, the ministry sent 240,800 science and technology specialists to ruralregions.

Zhang Shengming, 48, was one.

In 2007, Zhang contracted 13.3 hectares of land in Ningxia for wolfberry plating.

He found that pesticide and fertilizer abuse was common.

Zhang established a group of farmers who set strict restrictions on the use of pesticide andfertilizers. It soon attracted 537 households.

By 2012, the number of households planting wolfberries in the town had increased from 80 (in2007) to 1,050, producing a yearly income of 6,350 yuan per person.

The specialists, distributed in 31 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions, set up8,401 agriculture-related businesses by the end of 2011, covering 57.56 million people in ruralareas.

They managed to achieve 2.68 billion yuan in profit, according to the Ministry of Science andTechnology.

Zhang also launched projects to build agricultural science and technology parks nationwide.

Since 2001, 73 agricultural science and technology parks have been built, and these help trainfarmers in the most modern and productive methods of farming.

"The parks are like the headquarters of our agriculture industry - they combine each link on theindustrial chain, from R&D to products, and cultivate more agricultural talent for us," Zhangsaid.

The National Agricultural Science and Technology Zone of the Yellow River Delta (Bin Zhou),located in Shandong province, is an example for the integration of technology and agriculture.

In April, four digital "jackstraws" were installed on an experimental plot in the zone. The"jackstraw", a robot based on the Internet of Things technology, inspects the status of cropsand sends the information back to the user's cellphone.

"This means you can sit in your couch and farm the field via your cellphone," Zhang said.