China
is strengthening the research and development of agriculture, in order to
enhance the use of the small percentage amount of arable land the country
possesses, aiming to feed more than 1.4 billion people or one-fifth of the
world population with growing demands for food and beverages. The only way to
achieve such a monumental task would be the modernization and technologizing of
often outdated agricultural practices.
Much
has changed in the middle kingdom already, which still employs the largest
share of its population in the agricultural section, far more than in developed
countries.
Relying
on imports in many food segments currently, Chinese agricultural manufactures
have to find better ways to ensure sufficient food supply in the country, as
the competition from a booming population in regions like South America and
Africa is going to get tight in the second half of this century.
In
2015 China was already the seventh largest importer of food products, the
fourth biggest importer of animals and had become the world's largest importer
of vegetables.
Not
to mention, with modernization the Chinese economy is switching from an
agricultural based society to a manufacturing and service-providing one. The
society’s human capital is gaining advanced skillsets and the number of farmers
is dropping.
In
each case, technology is the key to balancing the food equation. The nation is
spending billions on water systems, seeds, robots and data science to roll back
some of the ravages of industry and develop sustainable, high-yield farms.
For
this process, the Agricultural Development Bank of China, one of the country’s
main policy lenders, agreed to loan at least USD450 billion by 2020 for the
modernization of China’s agriculture industry, according to state media of the
country.
And
progress is being made in the middle kingdom. More Chinese enterprises are
announcing breakthroughs in agriculture-related technologies in recent years
and reveal a view on the fast=paced development the industry is undergoing to
transfer from a simple agricultural product supplier to a service provider.
New
technologies on Chinese farms are enabling to monitor temperature, humidity,
and even light intensity of crops by using sensors and a control terminal.
Developing
protected cultivation is among the agricultural technology the Chinese
government has been working on to help especially rural residents in the arid
and semi-arid regions of China.
Agricultural
drones help already farmers scan fields, monitor crops and seeding or analyze
plant health. Farm activities can become much more effective when drone data,
IoT and computer vision technologies join forces to optimize strategies.
Intelligent farming
platform by Sinochem
According
to Xinhuanet, China’s agrochemical manufacturer Sinochem has recently launched
a new intelligent agricultural platform which is aiming to provide several
offline and online services for farmers regarding seed selection, soil
detection, machinery training, and many more. The platform is firstly launched
in China’s Anhui Province, a region mostly known for the vast grain farming.
Part
of the online platform is the automatically supply of fertilizers or
pesticides, as well as seeds, monitored by the platform and delivered by Sinochem.
This process enables farmers to get an analysis of their soil and a
recommendation by the intelligent system, which lowers costs and stabilize
sales.
The
company is another example for agriculture-related enterprises in China, which
switch their focus from pure agricultural product sales to agricultural
technical solutions offering. China’s farmers are often still relying on
traditional agricultural measures and need to be convinced that technology
integrated farming can reduce costs and ease many sectors of agricultural
process.
Sinochem
plans to promote its first-of-its-kind platform in whole China by building more
than 50 technical service centres by the end of 2018
Brain of Agriculture
In
October 2017, China has launched the first artificial intelligence (AI) project
in the field of agriculture and farming, called Brain of Agriculture. The
project starts with a system of a Precise Agricultural Platform, able to
execute 26 different functions in total. The project was officially launched in
Wuhan City, Hubei Province in China.
The
new system, using big data management technologies, cloud, computing, and super
artificial intelligence, is aiming to provide supporting data for effective
decision making of farmers. Factors that play an important role in the
calculation of Brain of Agriculture are soil and climate conditions, as well as
pest and diseases occurrences, which are monitored through sensors on the field
and from information, crawled from the internet.
New software to assist
farmers and traders in China
Kcomber
has developed a new agricultural services software for Chinese farmers,
traders, and retailers called Yoonop. It is a cloud service platform
starts that provides full ranges of comprehensive business management to
connect agriculture with market intelligence and knowledge sharing.
Yoonop embeds
household, manufacturers and big data service modules to realize the
connectivity of information on all stages of the agricultural supply chain as
well as consumption chain. The software enables farmers to track the
development of their crops and get immediate recommendations on disease
treatment, agrochemical usage, and cultivation based on pictures taken from the
plants.
Tracking
the supply and demand of thousands of crops in China, the system can give agricultural
formula recommendations and product quantity recommendations for farmers and
traders.
Do
you want to find out more about the new agricultural service software of
Kcomber? Please contact our team at econtact@cnchemicals.com to
discover how new technology is revolutionizing the way of agriculture by
reducing costs and optimizing output and sales of your crops.