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January 17, 2019

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Automated farm machinery set to replace dwindling rural workforce

Source: Agencies | 00:05 UTC+8 January 17, 2019 | Print Edition

A NEW combine harvester moves up and down a rice field in eastern China without a driver, offering a glimpse of a farming future that is automated.

The government is pushing firms to develop, within seven years, fully-automated machinery capable of planting, fertilizing and harvesting each of China’s staple crops — rice, wheat and corn.

That shift to automation is key to the farming sector in the world’s No.2 economy as it grapples with an aging rural workforce and a dearth of young people willing to endure the hardships of toiling on the land.

“Automated farming is the way ahead, and demand for it here is huge,” said Cheng Yue, general manager of tractor maker Changzhou Dongfeng CVT Co.

It provided an autonomous vehicle that was also used at the trial in the rice field in Xinghua in Jiangsu Province.

However, the road to automation is long and littered with obstacles such as high costs, the nation’s varied terrain and the small size of many of its farms.

Li Guoyong, a wheat farmer in China’s northern Hebei province, said: “I have heard of driverless tractors. But I don’t think they are practical, especially the really large ones.”

Most farms in his area are only a few hectares in size, he said.

To try to achieve its ambitious seven-year goal, China is supporting trials of local technology across the country organized by industry group Telematics Industry Application Alliance.

Members include state-owned tractor maker YTO Group, navigation systems producer Hwa Create and Zoomlion Heavy Industry Science & Technology Co, which helped develop the combine harvester used in the Xinghua trial along with Jiangsu University.

The next trials are slated for the northeastern province of Heilongjiang and for the hills around the southwestern city of Chongqing in the first half of this year.

Those come after a string of automated developments in the sector.

YTO developed its first driverless tractor in 2017 and is aiming to start mass production soon, said Lei Jun, an executive at the firm’s technology center.

Lovol Heavy Industry Co signed a deal with Baidu in April to apply the tech giant’s Apollo automated driving system to its agricultural machinery.

“China is expected to climb the autonomous technology ladder very quickly, mainly because Chinese companies can access the local navigation satellite system, which gives them an advantage over their international peers,” said Alexious Lee, head of China Industrial Research at Hong Kong brokerage CLSA.

Analysts and industry officials said an underlying trend for automation would be for farms to get larger as ongoing reforms should allow farmers to lease more land.

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