Sowing season
Technology empowers modern agriculture across China
AChinese proverb says, “The plan for a year lies in spring.” Looking across the fertile countryside, regions everywhere are seizing on the agricultural season to carry out spring farming. With the advancement of science and technology, more and more new technologies are being applied in agricultural production, unveiling a scene of modern agricultural development across the vast fields of China.
With the Qingming Festival, also known as “TombSweeping Festival,” approaching, West Lake Longjing, known as one of China’s best green teas, has entered the large-scale picking period. In the tea gardens in Hangzhou, East China’s Zhejiang Province, tea farmers are busy picking, sorting, and collecting fresh tea leaves.
Alongside these tea farmers, three “iron tea-picking workers” work diligently. Their hands are flexible robotic arms and their eyes are movable cameras, while their heads are “hats” made of solar panels. These three “workers” are intelligent tea-picking robots created by the agricultural robotics and equipment innovation team at Zhejiang Sci-Tech University.
This year, the robots have been upgraded to the 6th generation. Through continuous research and testing of technology such as artificial intelligence deep learning, depth camera positioning, and robotic arms, the new generation of robots has improved efficiency while reducing operating costs, the Zhejiang News reported.
The application of BeiDou intelligent agricultural machinery is a strong guarantee for stabilizing and increasing grain production across the country.
To date, more than 2 million agricultural machines with BeiDou positioning operation terminals have been installed nationwide, including more than 150,000 plant protection drones, according to Science and Technology Daily.
Currently, cotton planting in Xinjiang region has entered the preparation stage, so machinery operators are busy testing and maintaining equipment, and attending technical training to get ready for sowing.
Next to the Three Gorges Reservoir in Central China’s Hubei Province, drones are working with humans to transport sweet navel oranges out of the mountains.
In Zigui county, Yichang city of Hubei Province, a method combining farmer-raised funds and government subsidies was adopted to build more than 1,700 orchard rail transport machines with a total length of 356,000 meters, help fruit farmers purchase more than 200 agricultural drones and provide free training to over 500 operators.
Smart agriculture has become a major highlight of this spring’s management and spring planting. New technology such as big data and the Internet of Things are deeply integrated with agricultural production, and information technology is widely used in all aspects of cultivation, management, and harvesting, with the digitalization rate of large-scale planting reaching 26.4 percent, according to People’s Daily.