The specialists, distributed in 31 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions, set up 8,401 agriculture-related businesses by the end of 2011, covering 57.56 million people in rural areas.

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

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 train farmers in the most modern and productive methods of farming.

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

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 crops and 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.

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