Agricultural machinery facilitates farming activities across China

Agricultural machinery has made farming activities more efficient in China, which leads the world in terms of total number of agricultural machines. The mechanization of the harvesting of three staple crops - wheat, rice and corn - has basically been realized in the country, while drones have been widely deployed in agriculture.

A harvester reaps early-season rice in a field in Lugang village, Etang township, Hezhou city, south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. (Photo/Li Haotu)

The use of more efficient and low-loss harvesting machines has significantly accelerated wheat harvest during this summer. Over 600,000 combine harvesters were deployed to harvest wheat across China, with the mechanization rate for wheat harvesting exceeding 98 percent. The daily mechanically harvested area remained above 10 million mu (0.67 million hectares) for 16 consecutive days in the country.

Behind the increased efficiency is the progress of China's agricultural mechanization. At present, the mechanization rate of crop planting and harvesting in the country has reached 74 percent, an increase of 17 percentage points from 2012. The mechanization rate of the harvesting of wheat, corn, and rice has surpassed 97 percent, 90 percent, and 86 percent, respectively. By the end of 2023, the total power of agricultural machinery had exceeded 1.1 billion kilowatts in the country.

China's agricultural equipment manufacturers can produce over 4,000 types of agricultural machinery products in 14 major categories and 50 subcategories.

A staff member works at a factory of agricultural machinery in Da'an township, Yanzhou district, Jining city, east China's Shandong Province, July 13, 2024. At present, the township is home to over 100 agricultural machinery-related enterprises. (Xinhua/Guo Xulei)

“China has continuously improved agricultural mechanization and seen wider application of new technologies in agriculture, boosting production efficiency and effectiveness while providing strong momentum for high-quality agricultural development and solid support for agricultural modernization,” said He Ke, a professor at the School of Economics and Management of Huazhong Agricultural University.

During the current early-season rice harvest season in Liaojiang township, Chenzhou city, central China's Hunan Province, harvesters, rotary tillers, and rice transplanters are operating in succession.

"After harvesting early-season rice, we need to quickly plow and transplant late-season rice seedlings. A high-speed rice transplanter can transplant rice seedlings on 30 mu of farmland each day, which previously required 30 workers," said Zhang Peixiong, a local farmer.

Compared to wheat and corn, the mechanization of rice cultivation was once an area of weakness. To date, the mechanization rate for rice planting exceeds 60 percent across the country, a significant increase from 31 percent in 2012, with notable breakthroughs in the production and promotion of high-speed rice transplanters.

In addition to rice, China has seen encouraging changes in mechanized production of an increasing number of other crops. Intelligent agricultural machinery, such as unmanned agricultural machines and drones equipped with the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System and 5G technology, are finding their way into the frontlines of agricultural production at an accelerated pace across China.

As of the end of 2023, 2.2 million agricultural machines had been equipped with BeiDou terminals, and the total number of agricultural drones had exceeded 200,000 in the country.