Heilongjiang city turns to smart farming to boost soybean production

Bei'an, a major soybean-producing city in Heilongjiang province, is harnessing drones and big data to bring greater precision and efficiency to soybean farming.

At the city's national modern agricultural industrial park, a smart agriculture command center is using technologies, including big data, the Internet of Things and cloud computing, to monitor crops, weather and soil conditions, while providing farmers and agricultural technicians with real-time information and support.

The initiative is designed to help stabilize and increase soybean yields, cut production costs and improve efficiency, accelerating the transformation from traditional farming to technology-driven agriculture.

The command center is equipped with one Flyto Aircross 8 vertical takeoff and landing drone, two DJI Matrice 350 RTK drones and two DJI Zenmuse H20 drones. It has also established three smart drone hangars and five integrated monitoring stations covering pests and diseases, weather and soil conditions.

Together, the facilities create an integrated monitoring network spanning the air, ground and space, allowing agricultural conditions to be tracked from multiple angles.

Bei'an, located in northern Heilongjiang, is a standardized production base for soybeans used in green food products. It is also a national-level soybean seed-breeding base.

The construction of a national modern agricultural industrial park in Bei'an was officially approved in April 2024, with total investment of more than 21 million yuan ($3.12 million). Covering five townships in southern Bei'an, the park has a cultivated area of about 1.3 million mu, or 86,667 hectares.

Cui Daguang, director of the Bei'an Modern Agricultural Industry and Rural Support Services Center, said the smart agriculture command center was established to pool technological resources and create an integrated system capable of monitoring agricultural conditions and coordinating responses across the air, ground and space.

As part of the project, five villages across the five townships were selected to establish field monitoring stations. The stations collect data on weather, pests and diseases and soil conditions.

Drones, including one equipped with a multispectral camera, conduct aerial inspections and analyze spectral data to assess indicators such as crop chlorophyll, mineral and moisture levels, helping determine whether crops are developing normally.

When the aerial inspections or ground monitoring stations identify potential problems, agricultural technicians can be dispatched to the affected fields for on-site diagnosis.

"The goal is to detect weather-related disasters, pests and diseases at an early stage, provide a scientific basis for responding to them, and then deploy agricultural experts to take more targeted action," Cui said.

The system is intended to strengthen agricultural disaster prevention, mitigation and emergency response while supporting the high-quality development of the soybean industry in Bei'an.

Beyond crop and pest monitoring, the platform provides farmers with weather information, including wind speed, air humidity, carbon dioxide levels, atmospheric pressure, sunlight and rainfall. It also offers policy information relevant to agricultural production.

Cui said the system and platform began initial operations in September last year and has now been running for about a year.

The project is still in its early stages, with some AI-powered features still awaiting introduction.

"The system is not yet fully developed and its functions are still relatively limited," Cui said.

"However, the city is actively seeking new projects. Using funding from these projects, we will further upgrade and expand the system, including its network of field monitoring stations."

The next phase will focus on expanding the system's technological capabilities and monitoring network, laying the groundwork for a more data-driven approach to agricultural production in Bei'an.