Bigger Harvests from Human-Technology Integration

By GAO LI & CONG CHUNLONG

The integration of agricultural machinery, agronomy, and information technology is fostering smart farming across the country, and provides strong technical support for higher grain yields.

MAY 22 every year has been designated by Qingdao Sea Rice Research and Development Center as Sea Rice Transplanting Festival as an expression of its great respect to Yuan Longping, the father of hybrid rice.

Sea rice, a rice variety of high saline-alkaline tolerance, has opened up enormous horizons for China’s grain production. Its success has turned vast land space of barren beaches into fertile fields, and is an epitome of enhancing food security by technology.

Exploring Sea Rice

Yuan Longping, late academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, set up the Qingdao Sea Rice Team in 2012, and the Sea Rice Research and Development Center was established four years later. “The center’s Bainidi base was completed in 2017 to carry out experiments in screening rice varieties. Four varieties were chosen and their average yield exceeded 7,500 kilograms per hectare, with the highest topping 9,300 kilograms per hectare,” said Wan Jili, director of the center’s technology R&D department, “Sea rice was even mentioned in Chinese President Xi Jinping’s New Year speech in 2018, which was a huge inspiration to us.”

Yuan proposed the idea of “renovating seven million hectares of saline-alkali land” in 2017, and then started the industrialization of sea rice in 2019. The Qingdao center was approved as a pilot demonstration base for 5G smart agriculture in Shandong Province. According to Wan, the center has set up 10 demonstration bases across the country and four abroad. Among them, the plantation in Dubai became the first time that humans have successfully planted rice in a tropical desert. The diurnal temperature variation in the Dubai desert is 30 °C, humidity is below 20 percent, the organic content of soil is low, and seawater is 7.5 meters underground. These can hardly meet the growth conditions of rice. “It is very difficult to plant anything successfully under such harsh environmental conditions. But one of our rice varieties has a yield of more than 7,500 kilograms per hectare,” Wan said.

Efforts to prevent birds from eating crops is of great importance in agricultural work, planters erect a bird-proof net for sea rice in Sanya, Hainan Province on April 5, 2021.

Farmers operate drones to spray pesticides on a wheat field in Yongnian District, Handan City, Hebei Province, on May 13.

By the end of 2021, China’s sea rice had been grown on 40,000 hectares of land. This year, the cultivation will be expanded to 70,000 more hectares in eight provinces including Shandong, Heilongjiang, and Liaoning.

More Machines, Higher Productivity

In Shandong, a major agricultural province, some farmers in Laizhou City have greatly improved their work efficiency through mechanization.

“Installing the Beidou terminal system is equivalent to giving ‘eyes’ to agricultural machinery. After setting the working width and row spacing on the touch panel of the driver’s cab, the tractor will automatically travel along a straight line with the driving error per kilometer not exceeding two centimeters. As a result, our workload has been reduced by nearly half, and we have truly realized farming automation,” said Tao Qiping, chairman of Laizhou Jianzeng Agricultural Machinery Specialized Cooperative. At present, the operation of intelligent agricultural machinery can be found everywhere in rural Laizhou. The application of information technology has brought profound changes to agricultural production, as well as its operation and management.

“After driving tractors for years, I suddenly realized that I might lose my job,” said Tao, who has been planting land for a decade and began to install the Beidou system on various agricultural machinery three years ago. The Beidou system has undergone continuous upgrades in recent years. The original working speed was only eight kilometers per hour, whereas now, it has increased to 15 kilometers per hour, which greatly raises work efficiency. According to Tao, smart agricultural machinery is equipped with a variety of intelligent components such as high-definition cameras, AI processors, AI controllers, and sensors. During the operation process, they can sense whether there is a missed seeding in real time, and once discovered, the machine will immediately sound an alarm.

Pest control is an important part of field management. The hand-held pressure sprayer can only work 0.33 hectare of land per person per day, but with the introduction of agricultural drones, at least 70 hectares per day can be worked, thus greatly saving manpower and improving efficiency. Today, with the gradual popularization of these drones nationwide, they can not only fertilize and spray pesticides, but also assist with planting rice.

The integration of agricultural machinery, agronomy, and information technology is fostering smart farming across the country, and provides strong technical support for higher grain yields.

Technology Is the Key

Since 2012, guided by the strategy of sustainable farmland use and innovative application of agricultural technology for food security, China has initiated a number of national scientific and technological projects to improve soil fertility and increase the productivity of cultivated areas. Through the development of three-dimensional agriculture and marine agriculture, more farmland and food are available.

A worker is checking the operation of a water and fertilizer integrated machine in a greenhouse in Yangzhou Modern Agriculture Exhibition Center, Jiangsu Province on October 11, 2019.

technical cooperation

China has also helped other developing countries improve their agricultural production through technical cooperation and personnel training.

By the year 2021, a total of nearly 400,000 hectares of saline-alkali land had been transformed, and more than seven million hectares of new watersaving agricultural technologies applied in arid and semi-arid areas. Besides, the R&D of new equipment such as intelligent and efficient combine harvesters has also provided solid support for agricultural production. Statistics show that the contribution rate of China’s agricultural science and technology progress has increased from 53.5 percent in 2012 to 60.7 percent in 2020, and is expected to rise to 64 percent in 2025.

The continuous improvements made in the fields of agricultural science and technology are inseparable from the input of scientific and technological personnel. Over the past decade, China has implemented a total of 37,600 science and technology projects in poverty-stricken areas, with the investment exeeding RMB 20 billion. It has sent 289,800 technicians for these endeavors, built 1,290 agricultural innovation and entrepreneurship platforms, and promoted more than 50,000 advanced and applicable technologies. All of this in the end effectively allows scientific and technological achievements to benefit agricultural production and increase farmers’ income.

Moreover, China has also helped other developing countries improve their agricultural production through technical cooperation and personnel training. Since the establishment of the China-FAO South-South Cooperation Trust Fund in 2009, it has dispatched more than 250 Chinese agricultural technical experts to other developing countries to share knowledge, technology, and experience with their local peers through more than 1,300 training activities, which have directly benefited more than 100,000 people.

According to Agnes Kalibata, the UN Secretary General’s special envoy for the 2021 Food Systems Summit, China has managed its own grain stocks well. This not only guarantees the food supply of the Chinese people, but also contributes to the food security of all the people in the world.