Smart agriculture integrates modern information technology， agricultural machinery and equipment， and biotechnology， which is the development trend of modern agriculture. China is in the early stage of transitioning from traditional agriculture to intelligent agriculture. This article used the bibliometric analysis to analyze 40 812 relevant literatures in the field of global smart agriculture collected by the SCIE database. A knowledge map was drawn to conduct in-depth analysis on the core elements of knowledge， research topics， and cutting-edge hotspots of smart agriculture to provide reference and guidance for the development and study of smart agriculture in China. Results showed that the number of publications in the field of smart agriculture has increased significantly since 2016. China is the country with the fastest development in this field globally. Results of co-occurrence clustering analysis on keywords from 632 highly cited papers on smart agriculture in the past decade showed that the core elements of knowledge in smart agriculture included remote sensing， artificial intelligence， drones， the Internet of Things， and big data. smart agriculture can be divided into three major research topics including modern biotechnology represented by biological big data， information technology represented by the Internet of Things， artificial intelligence and remote sensing， intelligent agricultural machinery and equipment represented by drones and agricultural robots. The development of smart agriculture is a process of interdisciplinary integration to achieve highly precise， intelligent， and efficient agricultural production. Results of analyzing the evolution of keywords showed that information perception， processing， and management represented by the Internet of Things， as well as artificial intelligence algorithms represented by machine learning and deep learning， have been cutting-edge hotspots in smart agriculture research in recent years. The development of smart agriculture in the future was discussed from the perspectives of policy formulation， talent cultivation， and key technologies. It was proposed to achieve the agricultural transformation and upgrading in China by laying out key areas， cultivating new application-oriented talents， and developing original innovation.