High-tech provides harvest for farmers

NANCHANG－Rather than relying on experience alone to fertilize crops, farmers in Jiangxi, a major agricultural province in eastern China, are creating fertilizer formulas on a mobile app for this year's plowing season.

"Once I type in the location of my fields, I can access soil-testing reports that allow me to find out the ideal fertilizer mix for the grain and vegetables I grow," says Xia Qigai, who owns 6.7 hectares of farmland in Wannian county of Jiangxi province.

The detailed and tailored testing reports available to Xia and thousands of farmers are based on a provincial-level database that includes 300 new soil samples annually in the county alone.

Some 4 million hectares of farmland, about 88 percent of the total in Jiangxi, have introduced individualized fertilizer formulas based on soil tests and the database as China is expected to see negative growth in the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides for major crops by the end of the year.

The mobile app Xia began to use this year is expected to further encourage the idea among villagers.

Overloading farmland with nutrients negatively affects grain output and the quality of agricultural products and raises costs for farmers, according to Zhang Kaifeng, who works at the county's bureau of agriculture and rural affairs, which has updated the local database for years.

Xia says: "The mobile app helps me calculate the necessary nutrient content of my fertilizer." With the aid of the app based on the soil tests, the farmer says, he could save over 10 kilograms of fertilizer per 0.06 hectares and has seen an additional 30 kg of grain output.

During this year's plowing season, factory production lines have also been introduced in Jiangxi by major grain producers and agricultural enterprises to grow seedlings.

Human workers are replaced by high-speed seeding lines, smart seed-starting trays and a greenhouse control management system.

"Seedlings used to be raised artificially and took 25 days to grow because of low temperatures," says Wan Xincai, an agricultural technician in Fuzhou, Jiangxi. "Now, the seedlings can be transplanted to the fields after about 20 days due to favorable temperatures."

Wan adds that the higher quality and lower loss rate also contribute to grain yield which has surged up to six times higher. Up to date, Jiangxi has set up 123 seedling-raising bases, each with a factory covering over 67 hectares.

Along with the help of machines and the latest technologies, agricultural experts and professionals are also invited to give online courses and answer inquiries for farmers in Jiangxi. Jiang Junxi, a professor with the Jiangxi Agricultural University delivers livestreamed lectures that have attracted 320,000 viewers.

"During this time of the year, most diseases and insects still lie dormant, so it's time to carry out pest control," says Jiang.

Benefiting from convenient online professional training and high-tech farming, China's agricultural production is becoming greener, effective and more sustainable, according to Ling Jihe, chairman of the Lyuneng Agricultural Development Limited Liability Company, a leading agricultural enterprise in Jiangxi.

Xinhua