Machinery increases farm yields in Heilongjiang

Although early spring temperatures remain low in Northeast China's Heilongjiang province, farmers have been busy preparing for the spring plowing season.

At the No 290 Company of Beidahuang Agricultural Reclamation Group, a State-owned enterprise, 850 advanced agricultural machines, including 32 large machines and 30 unmanned rice planters equipped with the Beidou Navigation Satellite System, have been transported and stored in preparation for the coming farm work this year.

When Qiu Yujin, 35, saw a huge Claas combine harvester in front of him, he began looking forward to another bumper harvest.

"The machine costs around 5 million yuan ($721,000)," he said. "And the operator only needs to input a few parameters so it can plan its own route and operate along the shortest path.

"The machine can help us save much more harvesting time to seize the best sale opportunities," he said. "After finishing its work on our farm, it can also help more farmers in surrounding areas."

Qiu has worked his portion of the land for the company since 2012.

"Last year, the profit from my 80 hectares of corn and soybeans was 700,000 yuan," he said. "With the help of these modern agricultural machines — especially the newly introduced ones — I believe I will see high-quality crops and high yields this autumn."

In recent years, the company, which has 51,333 hectares of arable land for growing rice, corn and soybeans, increased its investment in modern agricultural machinery and equipment, upgrading from traditional methods.

The company has purchased machinery from renowned companies, including Case, Claas and John Deere.

During the Spring Festival period, the company held a series of agricultural training courses to comprehensively improve farmers' techniques and guide them toward new ideas on intelligent agriculture.

Beidahuang is the name used to designate the fertile region, including the Sanjiang Plain along the Heilong and Nenjiang rivers, in the north of Heilongjiang.

In recent years, the Beidahuang Agricultural Reclamation Group has been working hard on research and development into its intelligent agricultural services.

The group has set up six unmanned intelligent farm demonstration zones, and has 418 sets of unmanned agricultural machinery, including 176 modified and optimized last year.

The operating area of unmanned agricultural machinery is 22,693 hectares, according to local officials.

With the help of big data collection and collation, a digital agricultural service platform has been created, providing information that can be used to manage the process of intelligent planting and enhance the brand value.

Beidahuang has achieved a 99 percent mechanization rate on arable land and is making increasing use of advanced technology.

By 2025, the group is expected to take the lead in realizing agricultural modernization in the country, with the goal of achieving a comprehensive grain production capacity of 25 million metric tons.

In 2022, Heilongjiang saw a grain harvest of 77.6 million tons, accounting for 11.3 percent of the national total, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.

With a pristine ecology and one of the world's largest black soil zones, Heilongjiang leads the country in the amount of land devoted to planting rice, corn and soybeans, and has the nation's highest annual yield.