Nearly 30 journalists from countries including the United States, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Cuba and Singapore spent 27 to 30 September in Heilongjiang, the northeastern Chinese province known as the country's "grain barn", to see how machinery and data are being used on its farms during the autumn harvest.
In Harbin and Jiamusi they visited farm machinery makers and a smart-agriculture demonstration zone. At Jiamusi Jichi Tractor Manufacturing they climbed into a diesel-electric hybrid tractor and tried its BeiDou satellite navigation and assisted-driving system. At Heilongjiang Huida Technology they were told that locally made equipment, from drones to smart irrigation systems, is exported to many countries.
At the edge of a 1,000-hectare farm they watched driverless harvesters follow set routes while plant-protection drones flew overhead and a digital platform tracked field conditions in real time. Yew Lun Tian of The Straits Times said many farm tasks can now be monitored and managed by smartphone. Yaraslau Danilenka of Belarus's state broadcaster said seeing the driverless harvesters convinced him the technology would spread to more countries.
Heilongjiang, with its large areas of fertile black soil, is one of China's main commercial grain bases. According to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, the country is on course for a bumper grain harvest in 2026, as the autumn crops that make up most of its annual output come in.
China feeds nearly a fifth of the world's population on less than 9% of its arable land. Grain output stayed above 700 million tonnes in 2024 and 2025, and grain available per person has passed 500 kg, above the world average. A national plan for agricultural and rural modernisation for 2026 to 2030 sets a target for science and technology to contribute 67% of agricultural development and calls for wider use of artificial intelligence on farms.
The account of the tour was published by Global Agriculture.
Photo: NASA/METI/AIST/Japan Space Systems and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team / Wikimedia Commons (Public domain)
Source: Global Agriculture
Comments
(0)