January 14, 2004

Computerized Farming in China Raises Soybean Output By 18.75%

China has incorporated computerized farming technologies into its agriculture industry in an attempt to raise grain production in the northeastern province of Heilongjiang. Soybean output has risen 18.75 percent as a result.

Under the program, the Bayi Agricultural Cultivation University of Heilongjiang and the Heilongjiang Provincial Academyof Agricultural Cultivation Sciences will jointly apply precision farming technologies and protective cultivation to 660 hectares of cropland this year, which will expand to over 6,600 hectares within three years.

Wang Chun, vice-president of the Bayi Agricultural Cultivation University, said precision farming was a kind of agricultural operation mode under which information on soil, the environment inwhich crops grow, and how well crops grow is processed by special computer software. Information collection and processing also involves such high technologies as GPS (the Global Positioning System), RS (Remote Sensing) and GIS (the geographical information system).

Based on this computer-processed information, irrigation, fertilization and crop-dusting are carried out precisely, Wang said.

The Bayi Agricultural Cultivation University started a pilot program on precision farming in 2002, with an investment of 5.5 million yuan (665,000 US dollars). With imported modern farming machines, variable fertilization and precision seeding was applied to 133 hectares of farmland in 2003.

As a result, per hectare soybean output reached 2,375 kilograms,18.75 percent higher than the per-hectare output cultivated with conventional farming methods. Per hectare fuel consumption dropped by 30 percent.

Precision farming has been implemented in the United States, Canada and Australia among others.