PHOTO: MCFLY
CORONA OUTBREAK ▶▶▶
China’s Agtech companies to help out with planting in times of Covid
BY XIWEN QING F
or agricultural suppliers, preparing for the spring planting season is usually the busiest time of year. This year the Covid-19 virus led to the shutdown of
all staff and traffic obstruction caused further stagnation of the agriculture system. This hap- pened even though China opened up a green channel for spring planting, and allowed more flexibility and scale of agricultural supply con- tracts this year. For the farmers in the north, spring planting came earlier than usual and this overlapped with the corona epidemic. This made it necessary to mobilise government and industry resources to ensure that spring planting could progress.
In this critical period, large enterprises have the advantage that their stocks of raw material reserves are relatively well supplied. Also, now- adays some specialised export enterprises are directly selling their products to the domestic market, thus filling the domestic demand gap. And innovative enterprises are taking advan- tage of new ways to obtain customers, or to process orders easier and faster in order to rapidly expand their market share.
Agtech chips in China’s agtech firms are doing their best to en- sure that spring planting can take place. McFly, a supplier of drones, agricultural materials and storage warehouses, operates plant protection service centres in more than 30 counties and towns across China. At present, it provides free UAVs (and their ‘pilots’) for villages and towns to help rural areas with disinfection of operations and aerial patrols.
Jiahe Info launched the ‘Jiahe Spring Planting Preparation Decision Platform’. This combines epidemic prevention, as well as control and re- sumption of spring planting production through the management and analysis of agri- cultural big data. Using remote sensing
The outbreak of the Covid-19 corona virus has disrupted spring planting in China, since movement of goods and people has been heavily restricted. Luckily the nation’s agtech industry was able to help out with workarounds, ensuring a timely start of agricultural production.
technology, it releases macro tracking informa- tion which helps farmers enage in crop pro- duction earlier.
Shuxitech, together with several agtech leading enterprises, launched the ‘Spring planting non-profit alliance for resisting Covid-19’ as well as a series of new measures. It provides farmers with services including agricultural big data at the field level, smart suggestions and planting reminders, and intelligent online scheduling of agricultural machinery. It also provides online fi- nancial matching for agricultural resources and machinery, agricultural risk coverage, and re- al-time trading information services, using sat- ellite positioning, remote sensing, big data, and cloud computing technology. Providing these
smart services online enables farmers to reduce face-to-face contact, while still completing spring planting and agricultural production.
Why future agtech will help farmers survive crises In general, digital smart agriculture represents the main future trend in China. Digital aids, such as WeChat mini-programs (sub-applica- tions of the WeChat app) are playing a bigger role during the Covid-19 outbreak than was foreseen. When villages are closed off and con- ference marketing is prohibited, how can one get samples quickly to the farmers? The only way is an online sample, also known as a cloud sample. Digital tools play an important role in this process.
McFly provides free UAVs and their ‘pilots’ to villages and towns to help kickstart the agricul- tural season.
▶ FUTURE FARMING | 22 May 2020 59
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