Driverless tractors, farmerless farms: China explores precision agriculture

BEIJING -- "Sometimes, I just sit here, scrolling through my phone, playing a game or making calls."

Jiang Liqing is not an office slacker, but an experienced tractor driver at Xinhu Farm in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

Tractor engines still hum steadily, but the introduction of self-driving vehicles has changed the way Jiang works.

Unlike city roads, the wide croplands of Xinjiang have no white or yellow lines to keep tractor drivers in check. To keep a straight path, Jiang once spent up to 40 minutes marking out an 800-meter-long field before starting.

Self-driving tractors only need two marks and Jiang does them on a motorbike in five minutes. With a few taps on the control screen, the tractor eases into motion while Jiang sits back in the cabin, checking his phone.

From northwestern Xinjiang to Jiansanjiang, a major grain growing base in northeastern Heilongjiang province, to an automated farm in Xinghua, eastern Jiangsu province, China is exploring precision agriculture, a new way of farming that might one day lead to no farmers.

As more people move to the cities, getting skilled labor is a major challenge in agriculture. The Global Harvest Initiative in the United States estimated that from 2005 to 2019, the agriculture workforce fell by 58 million people or 11 percent.

Meanwhile, severe weather caused by climate change is expected to affect crop yields. How to feed the growing population with fewer workers while adapting to changing weather? Precision agriculture is emerging as the answer.

Shen Jun, chief scientist at Beijing Unistrong Science & Technology Cooperation, said precision agriculture applies technologies like global satellite navigation systems, remote sensing and automatic control systems over the whole farming process.

The deployment of the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System, the Gaofen remote sensing satellites and 5G networks enables China to leverage precision agriculture technologies.

In Xinjiang, for instance, the best time for spring planting usually lasts 10 days. An experienced tractor driver can plough, fertilize and sow about 133 hectares in this time. With a self-driving tractor, that goes up to about 200 hectares.