China's agricultural machinery embarks on the road to green transformation
At the recently concluded Fourth China Shanxi Specialty Agriculture Expo, electric agricultural machinery became one of the most eye-catching exhibits. Electric tractors, electric micro tillers, electric lawn mowers and other types of electric agricultural machinery not only have different functions and appealing designs, but are also extremely competitively priced, attracting many visitors who stopped to look and inquire.
“This is the first time the agriculture expo has displayed electric agricultural machinery on a large scale, and it accounted for nearly half of the agricultural machinery exhibition area.” said Xu Jingchun, assistant general manager of Shanxi Zhuoli Group. During the expo, which lasted only a few days, the company sold nearly five hundred electric agricultural machines, and many cooperatives and farmers also expressed purchase intentions.
In recent years, as environmental protection standards have gradually risen and the aging of the rural labor force has intensified, electric agricultural machinery has become popular among farmers because of its advantages of being clean, economical and easy to operate, becoming the “new favorite” of the agricultural machinery market.
Guo Sanmin, a farmer from Taigu County, Shanxi, told reporters that electric agricultural machinery saves labor and effort and is simple to operate. Nowadays, eight or nine out of ten farmers in the village use electric agricultural machinery for plowing and spraying.
⟦NL> “Using electric ones also saves money compared with diesel ones.” Guo Sanmin said, “For example, for a three-wheeled field transport vehicle, an electric vehicle consumes only 7 kWh of electricity per 100 kilometers, costing just over three yuan, while a diesel vehicle costs dozens of yuan in fuel for 100 kilometers.”
Xu Jingchun told reporters that shifting agricultural machinery from “drinking oil” to charging is currently the choice of many agricultural machinery enterprises, and one important reason behind this is the raising of agricultural machinery emission standards. The China Agricultural Machinery Industry Association recently announced that starting in October this year, the domestic emission standard for agricultural diesel engines will be upgraded from “National II” to “National III”; starting in April next year, main agricultural machinery manufacturers can no longer produce or sell complete machines equipped with “National II” engines. The upgrading of emission standards is forcing agricultural machinery enterprises to transition toward green development.
Zhang Yufeng, head of the agricultural machinery extension station of the Shanxi Provincial Agricultural Machinery Bureau, said that green agriculture is currently being advocated worldwide, including making agricultural power environmentally friendly and green, and at this stage the greening of agricultural power mainly refers to electrification. “This is not only a global trend, but also the next development trend for China's agricultural machinery.”
Zhang Yufeng pointed out that most electric agricultural machinery currently on the market consists of small agricultural implements, and China's research and development of large-horsepower electric agricultural machinery is still in its initial stage. If bottlenecks in battery and motor technology can be broken through as soon as possible, China's agricultural machinery greening process is expected to be at the forefront of the world.