Abstract:
The development of small-scale farmers face several obstacles, including the information asymmetry between production and marketing, and the lack of funds, knowledge and experience. Being a cooperative economic organization, the management of agronomic cooperative is influenced by natural, social and economic factors such as the climate conditions, market price, and the ability of farmers. The operation of the cooperative depend mainly on how to connect the information between production and market, evaluate the cost precisely, and organize the production according to the requirement. Learning from the idea of digital twins in industrial field, this paper proposes the concept of digital quads (digital cooperatives) based on the description, prediction, and prescription of parallel intelligent systems. The proposed digital cooperatives serve the cooperative management including planning, preparation, production, assessment, etc. This paper introduces the frame, design and key technologies of digital cooperatives, and discusses the potential user types and operation mechanism. The system consists of data sensing, decision support and decision execution, and the key intelligent technologies include plant modeling, crop planning, block-chain, machine leaning, etc. Taking organic rice cultivation as an example, this paper briefly describes the whole process of cost analysis, crop planning, and visualization of remote planting for cooperatives. The simulation of the contract production process illustrate part functions of cooperative managers. The concept of digital cooperative can provide guidance for the development of cooperative-oriented information systems. Due to the situation that small-scale agronomical economics dominate, and cooperatives are main managing bodies, the digital cooperative is helpful in promoting the capacity of manager, supporting the small-scale farmers to reach big market, and augmenting the overall efficiency of the agricultural physical social economical system.