In the sweltering heat of August, on a ridge between rice paddies in Yinzhou District, Ningbo, a group of young people in straw hats crouched beside a soil moisture monitor. Armed with tape measures, they meticulously checked the depth of the buried equipment, jotting down a long list of device serial numbers in their notebooks. This marked the fourth consecutive year that the "Digital Intelligence Empowering the Countryside" social practice team from Ningbo University of Finance & Economics has ventured into rural fields. Unlike previous years, which focused on installing new devices, this year's mission pivoted to the upkeep of existing hardware, targeting the "last mile" bottleneck in smart agriculture implementation: maintenance.

Since 2023, the team has been deeply embedded in rural communities for four years running, forging a unique path of "bringing the lab to the field and writing theses on the land." In the initial three years, they tackled the pain points of inefficient traditional farmland management and delayed monitoring. The team developed a proprietary smart agriculture monitoring system, installing intelligent devices in fields to collect real-time data on soil moisture, light, temperature, and humidity. Leveraging AI algorithms, they provided farmers with precise planting guidance. They also pioneered digital twin scenarios for farmland, constructing six virtual agricultural environments—covering greenhouses, hills, and orchards—to enable visualized field status, intelligent management, and precise early warning systems.

However, a complaint from a major grower at a specialty planting base in Ningbo struck a chord with team leader Li Tianyi: "Of the five sensors we installed last year, only two are still working this year." During their research, the team surveyed high-standard farmland and smart agriculture demonstration parks across several districts and counties in Ningbo. They discovered that most field devices—including monitoring equipment, irrigation controllers, and sensor terminals—are installed in open, dispersed locations. These units frequently suffer from damage or loss due to collisions with agricultural machinery, human interference, inadequate protection, and a general lack of maintenance oversight. This critical finding redirected the team's focus this year, shifting away from the traditional "install-first, maintain-later" mindset. They zeroed in on a core project: a special investigation into the loss of field smart devices.

This summer, the team's members traveled extensively across Ningbo's townships. Their process was systematic: first, they conducted on-site surveys to map the current layout of devices; second, they compiled data on losses and damage; third, they interviewed large-scale growers and village agricultural leaders; and finally, they analyzed gaps in the maintenance management systems. Through rigorous analysis, the team categorized the root causes of device loss into six key areas: unreasonable layout, lack of outdoor protection, weak awareness among farmers about upkeep, inadequate rural maintenance mechanisms, unclear division of responsibilities, and incomplete post-installation support systems. Building on this foundation, they formulated a multi-pronged optimization strategy. This includes improving device placement, upgrading physical safeguards, implementing digital traceability for maintenance, refining grassroots management protocols, and strengthening farmer education on equipment care. Their work provides robust data and a solid reference framework for building a comprehensive, end-to-end device management cycle that covers installation, usage, upkeep, traceability, and repair.