Higher summer harvest efficiency, with mechanized harvesting playing an indispensable role
In late June, the large-scale cross-regional mechanized harvesting in China's main wheat-producing areas was fully completed. This year during the "three summers," localities across the country invested a total of 560,000 combine harvesters, with a mechanized harvesting rate exceeding 92%. The agricultural authorities' meticulous organization and scheduling of the summer harvest, the promotion and application of a batch of new agricultural mechanization technologies, and the growing maturity of the cross-regional operation market enabled this year's summer harvest work to be completed smoothly amid a race against time yet in an orderly manner, during which the single-day mechanized harvesting area exceeded 10 million mu for 11 consecutive days, truly achieving a thousand-mile wheat harvest with every grain returned to the granary.
Summer harvest mechanized production welcomes "Internet+" services
The agricultural machinery operators and farmers fighting at the front line of the wheat harvest cannot do without the services provided by agricultural machinery management departments and agricultural machinery enterprises. The rise of "Internet+" in 2015 has made "three summers" agricultural mechanization production more efficient.
The Ministry of Agriculture strengthened information guidance, publishing wheat mechanized harvesting operation information for 17 provinces through the "Agricultural Machinery Cross-Regional Operation Service Express" system on the China Agricultural Mechanization Information Network, and issuing 340,000 "Agricultural Machinery Cross-Regional Operation Certificates," promoting supply-demand matching between agricultural machinery operators and wheat growers, and facilitating the orderly flow of combine harvesters. Henan Province organized more than 5,700 agricultural machinery professional cooperatives and large agricultural machinery households to sign 38,000 agricultural machinery operation contracts with farming households, with the area under mechanized harvesting and planting contracts secured in advance exceeding 27 million mu.
Jiangsu Province's "Safe Agricultural Machinery Connect" platform achieved information interconnection and online-offline interaction. The platform publishes mechanized harvesting information from all over the country, weather conditions, and knowledge on safe use of agricultural machinery for machinery operators, and can even help machinery operators preliminarily calculate the benefits of cross-regional operations; machinery operators can consult and seek help from the platform by sending text messages. Liu Qiang, an agricultural machinery operator from Zhangwan Township, Donghai County, Lianyungang City, sent a text message to "Safe Agricultural Machinery Connect" while operating cross-regionally in Zhejiang, hoping that the county agricultural machinery bureau could help them solve the problem of off-site annual inspections. After receiving the message, the Donghai County Agricultural Machinery Bureau found that more than 1,000 agricultural machines from the county were operating cross-regionally in the Zhejiang area, so it organized personnel to set up a new annual inspection point in Cixi City, Zhejiang, saving valuable operation time for the machinery operators.
Anhui Province implemented "wall-chart operations," combining the weather map, harvest progress map, and agricultural machinery distribution map into one. "The data on these three charts is updated in real time. Information such as which areas have ripe wheat, which areas lack agricultural machinery, and which areas face heavy rain is clear at a glance. We can reasonably dispatch agricultural machinery to achieve precise operations," said Hu Daolin, director of the Agricultural Machinery Management Division of the Anhui Provincial Agricultural Machinery Bureau.
Luoyang Zhongshou installed remote scheduling systems based on the Beidou satellite positioning system on more than 6,000 "China Harvest" combine harvesters, achieving remote operation monitoring. During the wheat harvest, the system can record the yield of each wheat field, and combined with relevant databases can analyze the fertilizer needs of the wheat fields, achieving precise fertilization and seeding. Foton Lovol upgraded its "Lovol Cloud Service," monitoring machine operation conditions through the "Golden Box" installed on combine harvesters. As long as abnormal data appears in the agricultural machinery, such as excessively high engine oil temperature, the system will light up and sound an alarm, and staff will immediately notify the operator to stop and check, eliminating faults in advance. Machinery operators can also connect their mobile phones to the "Golden Box" and achieve one-click repair reporting by uploading photos.
One-stop operations turn "three summers" into "two summers"
Most of the newly added wheat harvesters for this year's summer harvest are high-performance machines with a feeding capacity of 5 kg or more, and the follow-up of supporting agricultural mechanization technologies such as straw crushing and returning to the field, no-till corn seeding, deep plowing and subsoiling, and grain drying has allowed summer harvest, summer planting, and even part of summer management to be completed in one pass, with operation quality and efficiency significantly improved.
Shandong Province fully leveraged the advantages of more than 5,000 agricultural machinery cooperatives with good equipment and good services. Most agricultural machinery cooperatives' operations not only cover mechanized wheat harvesting, straw returning, and mechanized corn seeding, but also grain transport, fertilization, pesticide spraying, and irrigation, completing multiple procedures in one pass.
Shaanxi Province invested more than 1.2 million units (sets) of agricultural machinery and tools, reasonably dispatching more than 26,000 combine harvesters and more than 60,000 corn seeders, basically achieving one-stop "mechanized harvesting, mechanized transport, and mechanized seeding" operations. This allowed nearly 40,000 migrant workers in Long County, Baoji City, to work away from home with peace of mind, changing the previous phenomenon of being busy and running back and forth between the construction site and their hometown, and saving costs and increasing income by more than 10 million yuan for them.
The Renzhong Agricultural Machinery Professional Cooperative in Xiliqiu Village, Wangjiajing Town, Shenzhou City, Hebei Province, completed the harvesting, straw crushing, subsoiling, and seeding operations on 4,000 mu of land in just 3 days using only 12 sets of machinery. Sun Renzhong, chairman of the cooperative, said: "This one-stop agricultural machinery operation model is not only highly efficient, but can also increase yield by about 100 jin per mu. Straw has the best crushing effect within 1 hour, with a crushing rate reaching 90%, so the nutrients provided by the straw per mu are equivalent to 30 jin of compound fertilizer."
The Technology Extension Station of the Shanxi Provincial Department of Agriculture promoted and implemented wide-narrow row moisture-probing furrow sowing cultivation technology on 150,000 mu of dry land and expanded irrigated land, using a no-till moisture-probing furrow seeder that integrates stubble cleaning, furrow opening, fertilization, seeding, and compaction. It can plant wheat in the deep moist soil layer with moisture, while not burying the wheat seeds too deep, achieving one-pass agricultural machinery operations. Yang Jun, head of the Technology Extension Station of the Shanxi Provincial Department of Agriculture, said: "This year's yield increase in furrow-sown fields is conservatively estimated at more than 5%."
Grain dryers are the "tail of the dragon" in one-stop operations. Gu Jianzhong, director of the Wuxi Agricultural Machinery Bureau in Jiangsu Province, said: "Grain dryers not only solve the problem of having nowhere to dry grain, but also give grain production the ability to respond to rainy weather in advance, turning a promising harvest into a harvest in hand." Xu Kexiang, a large-scale grower in Erlangmiao Village, Da'an Town, Yanzhou District, Jining City, Shandong Province, sent the wheat from 400 mu harvested early directly for drying and sold it to a grain purchaser, receiving more than 400,000 yuan in grain payment for planting the next crop of corn. "In this way I seized the farming season. If corn is planted one day earlier, it may be harvested 3 days earlier. Moreover, overripe wheat grains naturally fall off before and after harvesting, causing waste of more than 5%," he said.
Cross-regional operation radius becomes more economical and reasonable
Li Weiguo, director of the Agricultural Mechanization Department of the Ministry of Agriculture, introduced that the number of combine harvesters participating in this year's "three summers" cross-regional mechanized harvesting reached 300,000, basically flat with last year, but the degree of organization increased, blindly going out as individual machines has become relatively rare, agricultural machinery cooperatives have become the main force in "three summers" production, and the market has become more standardized and orderly. Shandong Province vigorously promoted order operations and contract operations by agricultural machinery cooperatives, signing more than 8,000 cross-regional operation contracts and securing order operation area of nearly 40 million mu, accounting for nearly 2/3 of Shandong's total summer grain area.
Henan Province's "three summers" cross-regional operations changed from past "large troops" to "small detachments," contacting operation destinations in advance and then acting separately, which ensured reasonable allocation and scheduling of machinery. On June 8, the province's 140,000 combine harvesters put into operation set a historical high by harvesting 11.35 million mu of wheat. The Shenqiu County Agricultural Machinery Bureau divided the 1,100 machines participating in cross-regional operations into 5 operation detachments, carrying out zoned mechanized harvesting over an operation area of more than 1.3 million mu, with "wheat harvesters" earning more than 80 million yuan.
"In the past two years, as local combine harvesters have become increasingly sufficient and large wheat combine harvesters have continued to increase, operation efficiency has accelerated, time differences have narrowed, and the cross-regional operation radius has shrunk, but it has also become more economical and reasonable," said Chen Faming, deputy director of the Anhui Provincial Agricultural Machinery Bureau.
The once-famous "Yangzhou wheat harvesters" in the cross-regional operation market are becoming fewer and fewer. "Now Yangzhou machinery operators basically carry out agricultural machinery cross-regional operations across counties and cities, filling each other's gaps. Order operations have become the new normal, and cross-regional mechanized harvesting involving journeys of thousands of kilometers is rarely seen. Although the cross-regional operation radius is smaller, the operation content has expanded, such as mechanized transplanting, seedling raising, and plant protection," said Yin Lisong, deputy director of the Yangzhou Agricultural Machinery Bureau. Some Yangzhou machinery operators have also transitioned to large-scale planting. Jing Chuanlai of Xuqiao Village, Jiangdu District, returned home in 2013 and transferred more than 1,200 mu of land for grain planting, growing two seasons of rice and wheat crops each year, with net income of more than 400,000 yuan, 3 times the annual income from cross-regional operations.
⟦NL> "Now our cooperative mainly accepts operation orders from surrounding areas. Because most farming households in the village have entrusted their land to us for management, the land area is 2,400 mu. The cooperative's service scope has expanded to 6 surrounding villages, with an operation area of more than 13,000 mu. With the improvement of agricultural mechanization, the cooperative has taken on all farm work. Quite a few villagers joke that we farmers are about to be laid off and unemployed," said Shi Zhanjiang, chairman of the Yongwang Agricultural Machinery Professional Cooperative in Jizhou City, Hebei Province.