During the harvest season of wheat, China Mobile Limited (China Mobile) fully utilizes 5G, the Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing and other information technology to empower smart agriculture and contribute to a successful summer grain harvest.
Agricultural information technology supports summer grain harvest
Before this year's summer wheat harvest in Suzhou City, Anhui Province, China Mobile installed a monitoring system for the government of Dayang Town to realize the remote monitoring of the wheat fields across eight administrative villages under the jurisdiction of the town. In Guoyang County, Anhui's Bozhou City, China Mobile has also accelerated its construction of a 5G-plus smart agriculture big data comprehensive service platform project.
Engineers of China Mobile build a 5G-plus smart agriculture big data platform. [Photo/sasac.gov.cn]
Thanks to such information technology means as monitoring and the big data platform provided by China Mobile, the agricultural departments can now monitor the maturity of wheat and other crops in a timely manner and dynamically schedule skilled machine operators and agricultural machinery, facilitating efficient grain harvest and providing precise harvest data and information.
In addition, the big data service platform in Guoyang County also directly connects with the production and operation data of factories and enterprises in agricultural industry parks, and obtains information on agricultural product processing and sales. It helps increase both crop harvests and farmers' income and is a valuable tool for the management of the entire agricultural process.
Similarly, China Mobile's agricultural production information systems, such as digital monitoring and intelligent control, have played a crucial role in the summer harvest in Shaanxi Province.
In collaboration with the meteorological bureau, the agricultural and rural bureau, and the digital economy bureau of Baoji City, Shaanxi, the company sent over 20 million service messages to local villagers. These messages provided accurate real-time weather information of specific regions, guiding farmers to make informed decisions during the harvest period.
Precision scheduling and mechanized operations have increased harvesting efficiency and effectively controlled machine harvest loss, ensuring the greatest amount of grain is harvested and stored.
On Hongze Lake Farm, Suqian City, Jiangsu Province, multiple combine harvesters are working on harvesting, threshing, and the removal of impurities in the 6,000-hectare golden wheat fields.
While in the digital agriculture scheduling center of the farm, the screens display the real-time operation tracks of the harvesters on the right side and status information such as agricultural machinery, harvester operating time, and operating area on the left side. Administrators can check the harvesting progress and conduct precise scheduling to achieve a more efficient harvest.
Digital technologies help with summer grain harvest in rainy season
Food security is among a country's most fundamental interests.
When Henan Province encountered heavy rainfall during the summer wheat harvest, China Mobile used its digital technology to help secure a successful grain harvest.
In Yanjin County, Henan, known as a major wheat production county in China, China Mobile established a 5G smart agriculture management platform in collaboration with the local agricultural and rural bureau in the county's national modern agriculture industrial park. Mobile 5G technology, intelligent sensing, analysis, and control technologies and equipment have all been effectively utilized in the province's crop cultivation.
During the busy wheat harvest season, wheat combine harvesters worked efficiently in the fields, collaborating with the service command center to ensure smooth operations despite challenging rainy conditions.
Through the 5G smart agriculture management platform, staff collected and analyzed key data of agricultural machinery of different types working on large-scale farmland, covering their working hours and tracks, and implemented the scientific and rational allocation of machinery in response to weather forecast information. They achieved intelligent management in all round operations and ensured an efficient and orderly grain harvest through the integration of operators, machinery, and farmland. The combination of smart management and agricultural machinery has significantly improved the efficiency of grain harvest.
Agricultural machinery works on wheat harvest. [Photo/sasac.gov.cn]
5G-plus smart agriculture makes full-process management possible
While people were busy grain filling in North China in May, the wheat land in Southwest China's Sichuan Province had already turned golden.
"With China Mobile's 5G smart cloud speakers, we no longer need to visit households door-to-door to promote our products. It has indeed been a great help," said a staff member from Jingyan Village, Longfeng Sub-district of Pengzhou, a county-level city in Chengdu City.
Leveraging 5G, the IoT, and cloud computing technologies, China Mobile has replaced traditional wired broadcast speakers with 5G cloud speakers that cover a wider area and transmit information over longer distances.
This has resulted in the latest information regarding wheat policies, planting, and harvesting being more readily available to villagers, significantly improving communication with rural communities.
Meanwhile, in Masheng Kulue Village, Mahe Town, Yulin City in Northwest China's Shaanxi Province, villagers were busy planting corn for the year. In the corn fields, a digital project provided by China Mobile is used to boost corn production and acts as farmers' "secret weapon". The project can monitor pests, weather, and soil moisture in real time, intelligently analyze major pest types and can give guidance for insecticide operations. The project has also developed its own application, which makes it possible for users to conduct irrigation and fertilization with just a click.
Recently, in Huangpi District, Wuhan City, Central China's Hubei Province, the Changxiang Rongda agricultural machinery cooperative completed rice planting of nearly 30 hectares of farmland. Supported by China Mobile's 5G and Beidou high-precision positioning technologies, rows of rice seedlings were planted by the rice transplanters. One transplanter machine can complete a work area of 2 to 3.3 hectares per day, helping to save time, effort, and seeding costs.
Empowered by new technologies and new varieties, crop breeding, including of wheat, in Sichuan, has reached international leading level.
In Deyang City, China Mobile brings into play the advantages of government-agriculture-enterprise partnership and builds a 5G-plus smart agriculture management platform to help increase farmers' income.
Before sowing wheat and other crops, the platform simulates the output of each plot based on big data of cultivated plots, and then scientifically calculates the total demand for seeds, water, fertilizers, and pesticides of each plot.
During the crop growth period, the platform dynamically monitors their growth environment, and intelligently adjusts strategies for irrigation, fertilization, and pesticide use through platform data analysis. An intelligent water and fertilizer integrated irrigation system automatically implements rotation irrigation.
In the period of wheat harvest, the platform is able to accurately predict the maturity of wheat using remote sensing information and crop growth models. Through the platform, information technology is used in every step of crop production.
An engineer maintains facilities of the 5G-plus smart agriculture management platform. [Photo/sasac.gov.cn]
Sichuan's agricultural information shows that the total area of wheat sown in the province in 2023 is about 587,000 hectares, a slight increase from last year, accounting for nearly 60 percent of the wheat area in Southwest China.
It is estimated that Sichuan will harvest 4.52 million tons of summer grain this year, a year-on-year increase of 154,000 tons.
(Executive editor: Xie Yunxiao)
