China's Beidou system makes farming easier

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China's Beidou system makes farming easier

Technology workers inspect an automated tractor equipped with the Beidou system at a farm in Dengzhou, central China's province of Henan, May 25, 2022. Farmers said that as the summer farming work proceeds in China, smart facilities like automated tractors are being used, making the work more efficient and reducing labor costs.

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

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.

This is the first year that the company tried to harvest soybeans without reducing corn yields.

He said that the Beidou system ensures that tractors can lay straight rows at precise distances, which is crucial for the mixed plantings, as he is in charge of the company's plantation work.

He said they had sown 40 hectares in two days with the Beidou-equipped tractors.

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

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By the end of 2021, around 600,000 machines had been equipped with the Beidou system, according to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs.

In Hubei province alone, the Beidou system was installed on 27,407 farm machines in 3,885 agricultural cooperatives. Beidou subsidizes local farmers who equip their machines with a national project that supports crop harvesters, rice transplanters, grain dry machines and fertilizer sprayers.

The farmers who use the Beidou automated driving system receive a subsidy of 8,000 yuan $1,195 at the Yongwang Agricultural Machinery Cooperative in Huangpi district, Wuhan, Hubei province. All machines have been equipped with the Beidou system, said Hu Dan, head of the cooperative.

In 2015, the cooperative used Beidou to survey the area. Hu said that the Beidou-guided equipment is used in plowing, removing weeds, harvesting, controlling pests.

Tao Zhe, operator of smart machines at the Yongwang cooperative, said the Beidou system, integrated with other technologies, such as remote sensing, helps farmers monitor the whole farming process and provide precise information on each piece of farmland.

Tao, who started working on the farm after graduating from a university last year, said we can look at the farmland conditions on our mobile phones. Tao is working on further studies on the Beidou system.

Technology has made farming work easier. My parents came to my farm to see the smart machines and were impressed by the automated tractors, said Tao. Today's farm work is completely different from my parents' time thanks to modern technologies such as the Beidou system, which allows a lot of the work to be done by machinery.