Ready to Embrace the Future of Agriculture?

Ready to Embrace the Future of Agriculture?

In the era of big data, both manufacturers and service providers are faced with mission to embrace the innovative development brought by big data. What is the future of agriculture when industry players have increasing data capacity and technical advance? Prof. Xu Xiucheng from Zhenzhou University talked about big data, precise farming, and plant factory in the 2017 China International Fertilizer Development and Trade Forum held in conjunction with the trade show.

The chemical fertilizer industry must adapt to the era of new agriculture which combines industrialization, information technology, green operation, and urbanization. In his speech, Prof, Xu Xiucheng summarizes the development status of farming and innovative concepts in USA, Israel, Thailand, etc. He thinks that big data is the engine for modern farming, and the core is precise and balance the inputs to agriculture (such as fertilizer, pesticide, water, seed) to maximize the yield. In USA, only 300.000 people do farming and live-stock keeping and they contributed to 85% of American agricultural output. USA collects agriculture data completely and the data are accessible to the public. The agricultural data collected helps agricultural authorities of USA devise industry policies.

 The profitability of agriculture ensures investment into it. The full-time farmer in Iowa state has yearly income of 50,000~100,000 USD on average. Some even earn 100,000~250.000 higher than urban citizens. Farmers with master's degree will become popular in the agricultural industry of the US.

In Israel, farmers must measure and know a full range of data covering weather, GPS, soil, seed, fertilizer, and agrochemicals. With full knowledge of such data, farmers can conduct long term management and short-term simulation on the fields to maximize output and profit. Seed, fertilizer and agrochem suppliers need to receive all the data, put them into the unified model, and use the special algorithm to provide farmers with optimal solution and service. Israel has rigid natural conditions.

Its pilot-fields of oranges and corn adopt drip-irrigation technique, and irrigation-based GBI technique, which monitors the change in grow rate real-time and can measure the pressure immediately. Both the growth and the shrinkage of stem are related to weather condition. The data can help to judge whether the crops need more water or not. Prof. Xu Xiucheng suggests revolutionary innovation is necessary as it enables higher energy utilization ratio and efficient growth of crop with lower use of fertilizer.

The revolutionary innovation should take into consideration other factors influencing the growth of crop. It will cut fertilizer use in China by half by 2030, compared to the consumption of 2016. "In the coming 14 years, the fertilizer output will halve. Improved quality of fertilizer will enable manufacturers and service providers to earn profitability of 10 percent. Accordingly, per ton profitability will increase from 3.5% to 20%, and the profit of fertilizer industry will increase from 33.4 billion Yuan of 2015 to 76 billion Yuan by 2030", said Prof. Xu Xiucheng.