Currently, China uses about 600 thousand combines and over 200 thousand drones in its fields.
China is currently the leader in the total number of agricultural machines used, experts say.
At the moment, the mechanization of the production of three main crops, namely rice, wheat and corn, has almost completely been completed.
The large-scale introduction of technology, among other things, makes it possible to significantly accelerate the pace of basic agricultural work.
It is noted that this summer wheat was harvested using 600 thousand combines, as a result, the automation of its collection exceeded 98%. This data is provided by the Chinese publication People’s Daily Online.
The most important point is that China, for the most part, independently produces all the necessary agricultural equipment.
For example, Chinese manufacturers now offer the market over 4,000 types of agricultural machinery.
At the same time, China is not at all going to stop there; its immediate goals are to develop the further implementation of drones, as well as digitalization and artificial intelligence in agriculture.
“China is constantly improving agricultural mechanization and seeing greater application of new technologies in agriculture, increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of production, while providing a strong impetus for agricultural development and strong support for agricultural modernization,” said He Ke, professor at the School of Economics and Management Huazhong Agricultural University.
A significant step towards the mechanization of agriculture was the mechanization of rice production.
Due to the nature of its cultivation, this is much more difficult than with other crops, but Chinese farmers managed to mechanize, including rice planting.
It is noted that one rice planting machine is capable of processing about 2 hectares per day and replaces the labor of 30 workers.
At the same time, rice mechanization is still far from being brought to 100%; at the moment it is about 60%. However, this is clear progress compared, for example, with 2012, when this figure did not exceed 31%.
In addition to the active introduction of agricultural machinery, China is simultaneously introducing modern technologies into this equipment.
For example, many cars and drones are already equipped with the BeiDou navigation satellite system and 5G technology.
By the end of 2023, the BeiDou system had been implemented on more than 2.2 million agricultural machines, which significantly increases the speed and accuracy of their work.
