AI, drones, robots reshape farming in China's grain heartland

Inside Beidahuang Information Company in Harbin, capital of northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, a wall-sized digital map tracks conditions across some 3.2 million hectares of farmland.

Data on soil conditions, crop growth and tractor movements update across the screen, while satellite remote sensing, the Internet of Things and AI are being integrated into different stages of farming.

It is one example of how agriculture is changing in Heilongjiang, China's top grain-producing province.

Heilongjiang has ranked first in the country in total grain output for 16 consecutive years.

The comprehensive mechanization rate for plowing, sowing and harvesting has reached 99.28%.

Now, AI, drones, remote sensing and smarter machinery are pushing that highly mechanized system into a more digital phase.

Farming by data Wang Hao, deputy general manager of Beidahuang Information Company's market operation center, said a farmer inspecting crops on foot could previously cover only about 200 mu, or roughly 13 hectares, a day.

Drones and remote sensing can now monitor much larger areas and allow crop data across the monitored farmland to be updated every five days, he said.

The company's AI model for cold-region crops analyzes soil, weather and crop-growth data to generate planting plans and recommendations for variable-rate fertilization, which allows fertilizer use to be adjusted according to conditions in different parts of a field.

But scaling up agricultural AI remains challenging.

Wang said AI models require large amounts of local data and repeated testing because soil, weather and other environmental conditions can vary significantly from place to place.

Digital technology is also being used farther along the production chain.

In Wuchang, a major rice-producing area in Harbin, robots at Qiaofu Dayuan Agricultural Co., Ltd. stack packaged rice for shipment.

QR codes on the products provide information including where the rice was produced and its nutritional content.