Guangdong’s Largest Unmanned Farm Harvest

On the morning of July 12th, at the unmanned smart farm in Xiaba Village, Liucheng Town, Dongyuan County, Heyuan City, unmanned harvesters showed off their skills in aerial rice paddies. It is reported that this year, the farm has achieved a high yield of over 2000 acres of aerial rice, with a yield of nearly 600 kilograms per mu.

The reporter saw at the scene that only the sound of machinery was heard in the rice field, and no farmers were busy. A unmanned harvester, under the remote operation of workers, slowly enters the field along the established route and carries out the entire mechanized operation. After the rice harvest is completed, the rice is loaded onto a grain truck and transported to a drying workshop for workers to machine dry.

In 2022, after the establishment of the first unmanned smart farm in Heyuan, the “space rice” – Huahang Fragrant Silver Needle, which is the first in China, was planted. The farm’s relevant person in charge, Wang Jiankuan, introduced that the farm covers an area of over 4200 acres and has now planted over 2000 acres of aviation rice, which has advantages such as good quality, high yield, strong resistance to lodging, and disease and pest resistance.

Relying on the whole process mechanized planting technology led by Professor Luo Xiwen of South China Agricultural University and an academician of the CAE Member, the unmanned smart farm has made full use of the Internet, the Internet of Things, big data, artificial intelligence and other modern scientific and technological means to cooperate with the National Research Center for Plant Aerospace Breeding Engineering Technology to establish the largest unmanned farm in the province.

When the rice is ripe and harvested, the farm can remotely and real-time obtain data on agricultural machinery, achieving full unmanned coverage of rice cultivation, planting, management, and harvesting production processes. The unmanned harvesters and grain trucks used on the farm can harvest five or six acres of rice fields per hour. Compared to the manual work efficiency of harvesting half an acre of land per person per day, calculated based on 10 hours, the work efficiency can be improved by nearly 100 times.