Pudong eyes unmanned farm growth

Shanghai's Pudong New Area will accelerate the construction of unmanned farms to enhance intelligent food production and boost the high-quality development of modern agriculture, according to a plan released by the district on Monday.

Pudong New Area aims to build over 1,300 hectares of unmanned farms in stages by the end of the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25), hoping to contribute to the formulation of standardized technical guidance for the construction and operation of unmanned farms in China.

An unmanned farm basically refers to a production mode that adopts new-generation information technologies to complete all the tasks of farm production and management in an intelligent and autonomous manner.

With the application of advanced technologies such as the internet of things, big data, artificial intelligence, 5G telecommunications, robotics, and the remote control of intelligent facilities, equipment and machinery, such farms are able to realize unmanned whole-process production.

The plan requires the area of a single unmanned farm to be no less than 66.7 hectares, which should be equipped with three intelligent tractors, three intelligent planting machines, two intelligent spraying devices and two intelligent combine harvesters. In addition, an intelligent cloud platform must be the core of an unmanned farm's operation, storing and processing information and data, as well as learning and making commands.

By offering subsidies and preferential policies, Pudong plans to complete the construction of 204 hectares of unmanned farms in Nanhui New Town and 597 hectares in seven other towns this year, followed by the construction of another 546 hectares next year.

In recent years, China has been making efforts to promote intelligent agricultural development. A road map released by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in May 2022 highlighted the popularization of intelligent agricultural machinery equipped with navigation technology and automatic driving capabilities, as well as the building of a number of unmanned farms by the end of 2025.

Shanghai has been continuously expanding investment in modern agriculture, with 953 hectares of unmanned farms already built across the city.

The city's vegetable production has also become more mechanized, with 46 mechanized production demonstration bases set up and two-thirds of plowing, sowing and harvesting done with machinery.