Baoji, Shaanxi Promotes Spring Ploughing with Technology and Services for Summer Grain Harvest
Since the beginning of this spring, Baoji City in Shaanxi Province has earnestly implemented the spirit of the central and provincial rural work conferences, seizing the agricultural season with precise policies. By focusing on technology empowerment, on-site services and inter-departmental collaboration, the city has solidly advanced spring ploughing and field management, promoting the improvement of seedling conditions, according to China Agriculture News. Up to now, 2.85 million mu of wheat in the city is growing well, with grade I and II seedlings accounting for 90.89%, an increase of 10.16 percentage points compared with before winter.
To address the tight schedule and labor shortage in spring management, Baoji has actively applied intelligent equipment to realize more intelligent and precise field management. It has promoted integrated water and fertilizer management in 23 towns and villages, laying 270,000 mu of new drip irrigation belts and equipping 1,236 sprinkler irrigators, developing 644,500 mu of efficient water-saving irrigation, according to Shaanxi Daily. This has transformed irrigation from “flood irrigation” to “digital precision irrigation” with remote water and fertilizer supply.
UAV operations have also been widely promoted in major wheat-producing areas. The city has put 378 plant protection UAVs and 242 self-propelled sprayers into use, with a daily operation capacity of over 100,000 mu and a cumulative operation area of 1.52 million mu-times, shifting from “manual pesticide application” to “machine-driven field management”. In Wujing Town, Fufeng County, self-propelled high-pole sprayers have been operating efficiently, with a single machine capable of completing 400 to 900 mu of pest control per day, noted Wu Zhiqiang, Secretary of the General Party Branch of Xiaozhai Village.
Digital field management has been further advanced by integrating the Internet of Things and intelligent sensing equipment to build a digital agricultural condition monitoring network. Relying on more than 70 sets of IoT devices and smart agriculture platforms, the city comprehensively analyzes and judges “three conditions” (seedling, soil moisture and pest conditions), guiding farmers to conduct precise water and fertilizer regulation and pest control.
The city has also deepened technical guidance with multi-dimensional services. More than 1,500 person-times of agricultural technicians have been sent to the front line, covering key agricultural periods, large-scale entities and integrated technologies. Eighty-six wheat and oil demonstration fields have been given on-site diagnosis and classified measures to promote weak seedlings to become strong. Eighty-seven “expert lectures + field practice” training sessions have been held, training 6,900 large-scale farmers and selecting over 300 “field experts” as demonstration households.
To consolidate the guarantee for spring ploughing, Baoji has strengthened collaboration with finance, water conservancy, meteorology and supply and marketing departments. A green channel for fund allocation has been established with the finance department to issue funds for seedling improvement directly to counties and districts. The water conservancy department has maintained irrigation channels and pumping stations, while the meteorological department issues special reports and early warnings for natural disasters. The supply and marketing system has reserved over 1,000 tons of chemical fertilizers, delivering them directly to farmers to reduce costs.
With technological empowerment, refined services and comprehensive guarantees, Baoji’s spring ploughing work has been carried out in an orderly manner. The intelligent transformation of field management and full-coverage technical services have not only solved the practical difficulties of farmers but also laid a solid foundation for a bumper summer grain harvest, demonstrating the vitality of modern agriculture in central Shaanxi.
