When will full mechanization of corn production be achieved in China?

Corn is one of China's three major crops, an important food and feed raw material, and also an important chemical raw material. With the development of breeding technology, cultivation technology, and mechanical equipment, wheat and rice have gradually achieved the transition from planting to harvesting by mechanization.

The development of corn harvesting machinery in developed countries began in the early 20th century, and corn harvesting has now been fully mechanized. However, due to its own particular characteristics, corn has not yet achieved full-process mechanization in China, and the exploration of corn planting mechanization has never stopped.

Corn mechanized harvesting technology refers to the process of using corn harvesting machinery to complete multiple operations in the field in one pass, including ear picking, husking, loading of ears for threshing, chopping and returning or recovering stalks, and grain drying and harvesting. To this day, corn sowing (except in some mountainous areas) has basically achieved the transition from manual dibbling to mechanized sowing, while corn harvesting has also gradually shifted from manual ear harvesting and manual threshing to a harvesting method of coordinated manual and mechanical operation, and mechanized grain harvesting is the ultimate highest goal to be achieved.

Corn is the most widely distributed grain crop planted in China. According to the Ministry of Agriculture, preliminary statistics show that in 2010 the national corn mechanical harvesting rate was only about 25%, and by 2012 the national corn mechanical harvesting rate exceeded 40%, an increase of 6.5 percentage points over the previous year. China's corn mechanical harvesting rate has increased by more than 6 percentage points for 4 consecutive years, showing a trend of rapid development. However, due to China's regional characteristics, the corn mechanical harvesting rate varies greatly among provinces and localities, so that in many major corn-producing areas, mechanized corn harvesting remains the most prominent and weakest link in corn production mechanization and even in grain production mechanization.

With the migration of rural labor to cities and towns, traditional manual harvesting has gradually become unable to meet the needs of production development. On the one hand, manual harvesting is highly labor-intensive and farmers work very hard, so they expect mechanized harvesting; on the other hand, with rising labor costs and increasing difficulty in hiring laborers, under the same income conditions laborers are more inclined to go to cities to work rather than engage in agricultural physical labor. In addition, the development of concentrated land planting makes an efficient corn harvesting method even more urgently needed. From these aspects, mechanized corn grain harvesting is the general trend.