China's Hope: Unmanned Farms

China hopes its farms will eventually be run by machines who do the work and the thinking. The vision of unmanned Chinese farms is an astounding great leap from its present highly labor-intensive fragmented farming model.

At a "fully automated agriculture" pilot kicked off last week in Jiangsu Province's Xinghua municipality, a central government official remarked that agricultural field work is rapidly becoming digitized, automated, and linked to the Internet as fusion sensors, precision navigation, artificial intelligence, cloud computing and big data increase in popularity. The pilot kick-off featured unmanned tractors, rice transplanters, pesticide applicators, and fertilization equipment. Many use sensors, controllers, and a Chinese satellite for navigation.

The official said tractors on autopilot, intelligent drip irrigation, variable application of fertilizer and other new intelligent technologies are already in use by advanced countries like the United States and Israel. These technologies can help China cope with its aging work force, low productivity, polluting farming methods, and low value added in farming, the official remarked.

The 7-year pilot for automated agriculture is sponsored by an automobile industry technology alliance and the Xinghua local government. The pilot aims to build a foundation for a new Chinese agricultural production model by demonstrating advanced farm operation models and technologies, step by step bringing digitization, artificial intelligence, and online connections to cultivation, planting, field management, harvest, storage, and transportation. They hope agriculture will become a wealthy industry and that farming will become a new high-tech profession.

According to the president of Jiangsu University, unmanned farming equipment has been adapted to Chinese conditions and will bring earth-shaking changes to agriculture, both in China and in the world.

A commercial attaché from Ukraine's embassy attending the event said he hoped China would set up agricultural machinery factories in his country. An official from a Russian company said digital technology is the wave of the future, and she expressed interest in cooperation with Chinese companies.