Deepening the fertile soil of technology and cultivating smart agriculture

Agriculture is one of the main industries in Heilongjiang, Shaanxi, and Xinjiang. Agricultural power is the foundation of socialist modernization power, and promoting agricultural modernization is an inevitable requirement for achieving high-quality development. Through technological guidance and improving the level of agricultural technology, we can continuously promote agricultural modernization construction and achieve high-quality development of agriculture and rural areas. How can these three places adapt to local conditions to achieve the transformation of traditional agriculture into modern agriculture? Come and see the reporter’s on-site research.

Space satellites, low altitude aircraft, field sensors, and soil samples, among other secret weapons, together form three-dimensional information about the sky, space, and ground of rice fields. By referring to historical data and other comprehensive analysis, technicians can customize fertilization prescription maps for each plot based on different growth periods of rice.

Cultivated land is the most crucial factor in achieving high grain yield. As the largest commodity grain production base in China, 156 million acres of black land are the “lifeblood” of Heilongjiang’s high yield. However, in recent years, black soil has been facing soil fertility overdraft. The traditional fertilization method used previously was to apply uniform force to the entire plot, and the time was also determined based on experience. But the soil fertility of different small areas within a whole plot of land varies, and the degree of hunger of crops varies at different growth stages. Fertilization is insufficient, fearing that crops may not be fully fed. Excessive fertilization not only wastes but also harms the black soil. How to fertilize more scientifically and reasonably? Technological innovation is necessary.

In fact, the thinning of fertility, the thinning of soil layers, and the hardening of soil quality have become common problems that urgently need to be solved in the protection of black soil in China. In response to the shortage of relevant scientific and technological talents in various regions, Heilongjiang Province has established a black land protection and utilization expert group consisting of 54 top experts nationwide in 2021 to integrate resources nationwide, and carry out scientific and technological research and integration.

Ke Xiaotao, Deputy Director of the Agricultural and Animal Husbandry Technology Promotion Center of Xinjiang Changji Prefecture Agricultural and Rural Bureau, told reporters that in order to accelerate the promotion of agricultural mechanization, since 2012, Changji Prefecture has added 5 million yuan of special funds annually to promote the application of new agricultural machinery, in addition to the national and autonomous region agricultural machinery purchase subsidies.

In addition to agricultural machinery subsidies, the integration of agronomy and agricultural machinery vigorously promoted in Changji Prefecture is also crucial for the promotion of agricultural mechanization. So what is the integration of agronomy and agricultural machinery? Wang Zhanbiao, Deputy Director of the Scientific Research and International Cooperation Department of the Western Agricultural Research Center of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, told reporters that taking cotton as an example, in the past, it was mainly handpicked, so crop shape, planting spacing, and other factors were not considered to adapt to mechanized operations. At the beginning of using cotton pickers, it was often difficult to clean them. We need to promote mechanization on a large scale and adjust the planting varieties and cultivation modes.