Work at advanced farm thrives on technological innovation

In the past, farmers tended to organize their plantation work based on decades of experience. Now, they need only follow guidance from a smartphone app.

At an advanced farm with 136 hectares of high-standard cropland in Wuhu, Anhui province, agricultural technicians have used satellites, drones, sensors and machines in recent years to gain higher yields.

Ji Yanbao, an expert at Zoomlion Smart Farming, a company that manages the farm by renting its fields from villagers, said, "With the real-time data collected by these four types of devices and technicians, we built a smart system called Agriculture Brain to organize all agricultural activities."

The system provides a "one-size-fits-all" solution for a more modernized agricultural sector, he added.

"Right from the start, we were able to keep the height differences between plots of land to within 3 centimeters, enabling the plots to be sufficiently flat for irrigation and fertilization work," Ji said.

Sensors installed in different areas of the farm provide the technicians with accurate information about soil fertility, temperature and humidity, he said.

The data collected is processed by a cloud platform, which then gives advice or orders to technicians and unmanned machines.

Based in Eqiao township in Wuhu's Yijiang district, the farm is a demonstration site for Zoomlion Smart Agriculture, and Zoomlion Smart Farming now serves some 170 agricultural entities owning a total of about 19,000 hectares of high-standard cropland in Wuhu, Ji said.

"We hope that each of the farms we serve in the future will boast at least 60 or 70 hectares of land, making our work more efficient," he added.

He said the provision of high-standard cropland provides a firm foundation for the company's work. It has mainly targeted rice planting, which is considered to be more complicated compared with other crops.

Song Weibing, an expert at Wuhu Agriculture Technology Center, said, "With the solution offered by Zoomlion, farming costs have been reduced and the quality of rice improved."

Thanks to the new technology and mode of business, the rice plantation's net profit last year rose to about 9,000 yuan ($1,254) per hectare, up from some 3,000 yuan per hectare previously, Song said.

The central authorities have pledged to develop all China's permanent basic cropland into high-standard cropland. The experts said that as a result, Zoomlion would be able to further optimize its service and continue investing in the research and development of unmanned agricultural machines.