Abstract:Rural revitalization is a major task in realizing the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. Agriculture is the foundation of rural areas, and developing smart agriculture is an important means to realize rural revitalization. The southern hilly and mountainous areas are the concentrated distribution areas of land desertification in China, with obvious disadvantages in agricultural infrastructure, large poverty areas, and deep poverty levels. They are the “hard bones” that are difficult to tackle in rural revitalization in China. In the important period of consolidating and expanding the achievements of poverty alleviation and continuously promoting rural revitalization, under the background of the vigorous development of high technologies such as the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, and big data, the issues that urgently need to be thought about and solved include: how to realize informatization in the southern hills and mountains, how to find a reasonable path of modern agricultural and rural development, and how to drive rural peace and prosperity with agricultural development. Based on the basic status quo of population, cultivated land, and landforms in the southern hills and mountains, this study analyzes thoroughly the pain points that limit the development of agriculture in the southern hills and mountains. Focusing on the whole process of intelligent perception, intelligent communication, intelligent decision-making and intelligent operation of smart agriculture, it proposes ideas and steps for developing smart agriculture in the southern hills and mountains of China with the help of information and intelligent means. With the aim to form a set of smart agriculture development model to help rural revitalization in southern China, it will take Shuicheng County in Guizhou Province as an example to demonstrate before promoting it in an all-round way on a large scale. Finally, focusing on the shortcomings and challenges of the development of smart agriculture in the southern hills and mountains, four development suggestions are put forward.