Satellite system makes farming more efficient

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Tractors connected with the Beidou Navigation Satellite System conduct spring ploughing in Zhangye, Gansu province, in April, 2022 (CHENG XUELEI / FOR CHINA DAILY)

As summer farming work proceeds across China, smart facilities such as automated tractors are being widely used, making the work more efficient and reducing labour costs, farmers say.

One of the technologies that backs up the smart facilities is the Beidou Navigation Satellite System, China’s home-grown system known for its high-precision positioning service.

At a farm in Pingyuan county, Shandong province, farmers at Pingyuan Luwang Agricultural Development Co have been using tractors equipped with the Beidou system to plant soybeans between rows of corn since June 15, 2022.

This is the first year that the company tried the combined planting of the two crops, allowing farmers to harvest soybeans without reducing corn yields.

“The Beidou system ensures tractors can lay straight rows at precise distances, which is crucial to the mixed plantings,” said He Shibao, in charge of the company’s plantation work.

Nearly 100 acres had been sown in two days with the Beidou-equipped tractors, he said.

In addition to supporting the sowing, the Beidou system is used with machines including harvesters and drones that spread fertilisers to ensure crops can be taken care of and harvested with machinery.

In China, about 600,000 machines had been equipped with the Beidou system by the end of last year, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs says.

In Hubei province alone, the Beidou system had been installed on 27,407 farm machines in 3,885 agricultural cooperatives. Tractors, harvesters, rice transplanters, grain dry machines and fertiliser sprayers are guided by the system.

At Yongwang Agricultural Machinery Co-operative in Wuhan, Hubei province, machines have all been equipped with the Beidou system, said Hu Dan, head of the co-operative.

In 2015 the co-operative started using Beidou to survey the area. Now the Beidou-guided equipment is used in ploughing, removing weeds, harvesting, controlling pests, Hu said.

“The Beidou system, integrated with other technologies such as remote sensing helps us monitor the whole farming process and provide precise information on each piece of farmland, helping farmers carry out work according to the individual farmland,” said Tao Zhe, an operator of smart machines at the Yongwang co-operative.

“We can oversee the farmland conditions on our mobile phones.”

Tao, who began working on the farm after graduating from university last year, is conducting further studies on the Beidou system.

“Technology has made farming much easier. My parents came to my farm to see the smart machines and they were impressed by the automated tractor. It’s completely different from my parents’ time thanks to modern technologies such as the Beidou system, which enables a lot of the work to be done by machinery.”