How the Watchers of the Wheat Fields Can Keep to the Path of Farmland Protection
“All things are born from the soil, and with soil there is grain.” Farmland is the most precious agricultural resource and an important factor of production, and it is the livelihood on which farmers who face the yellow earth with their backs to the sky depend.
The decline in farmland quality has become a huge stumbling block troubling China's agricultural development in recent years. With the publication of the Action Plan for Zero Growth in Chemical Fertilizer Use by 2020, saving water and fertilizer resources and improving fertilizer use efficiency have once again sparked heated discussion in the industry.
Low fertilizer use efficiency is the main cause of environmental pollution caused by chemical fertilizers, and it triggers a series of environmental and food safety problems. Experts in the industry call for accelerating the promotion of controlled-release and slow-release fertilizers, promoting the solution to the worsening problem of soil pollution, and driving agricultural quality improvement and efficiency enhancement. On this basis, Kingenta joined forces with dozens of well-known universities and research institutions at home and abroad to carry out technical research on new fertilizers that are highly efficient, energy-saving, resource-saving and ecologically friendly, and succeeded in developing controlled-release and slow-release fertilizers suitable for field crops with independent intellectual property rights, and built the world's largest controlled-release and slow-release fertilizer production base with a capacity of 1.7 million tons.
In order to adapt to the reality that China's shortage of water resources restricts the development of modern agriculture in China, Kingenta gathered top experts from around the world to carry out scientific and technological research on integrated water and fertilizer technology. On November 20, 2014, 1.23 billion yuan raised was used for the 600,000-ton nitro compound fertilizer project in Guizhou and the 400,000-ton water-soluble fertilizer project under construction. On May 28, 2015, the first-phase 200,000-ton water-soluble fertilizer project of Sater in Wengan County, Qiannan Prefecture, Guizhou Province, was put into operation, enabling China's water-soluble fertilizer to truly achieve large-scale development and giving China, for the first time, world-class quality nitro fertilizer with obvious advantages in improving fertilizer use efficiency, saving agricultural water, reducing ecological and environmental pollution, improving crop quality and reducing labor, laying a solid foundation for advancing China's integrated water and fertilizer technology and achieving a splendid transformation in the company's upgrading.
“Strengthen integrated water and fertilizer technology and promote the application and extension of new fertilizers or soil remediation products such as controlled-release and slow-release fertilizers, water-soluble fertilizers, bio-organic fertilizers and soil conditioners.” During this year's Two Sessions, Wan Lianbu, a deputy to the National People's Congress, proposed accelerating the application of integrated water and fertilizer technology to alleviate and regulate farmland quality in response to the increasingly prominent problems of farmland quality today.
Water-soluble fertilizers and integrated water and fertilizer technology have advantages that ordinary fertilizers do not have. Compared with traditional planting methods, integrated water and fertilizer technology can concentrate water and nutrients in the root layer for supply, can ensure the wetting depth of the roots of vegetables and fruit trees, avoids leakage and loss of water and fertilizer, and the amount of water and fertilizer saved per mu is considerable. At the same time, it reduces soil and air humidity, effectively reduces pests and diseases, and the amount of pesticides used is correspondingly reduced.
With integrated water and fertilizer technology, irrigation, fertilization and pesticide application can all be completed automatically through the pipe network, greatly saving the necessary labor in the agricultural production process, and saving 90% of labor compared with conventional methods. Take an 80-mu sugar orange orchard in Nanning, Guangxi, as an example. Conventional watering and fertilization required 8 people and 6 days to finish each time, with a total labor use of 48. After adopting integrated water and fertilizer technology, each watering and fertilization can be completed by only 2 people in 2 days, with a total labor use of 4, less than 1/10 of the original.
According to data, with the application of integrated water and fertilizer technology, corn yields increase by more than 200 kg per mu, wheat by 100 kg per mu, potatoes by more than 1,000 kg per mu, cotton (seed cotton) by more than 30 kg per mu, and vegetables by more than 500 kg per mu, and agricultural products have excellent marketability and improved nutritional quality. Both grain production and cash crop production have achieved effective cost savings and efficiency improvements. As the level of water and fertilizer resource utilization rises substantially, water productivity increases by 20%-50%, and fertilizer use efficiency also increases by about 20 percentage points.
Water-soluble fertilizers and integrated water and fertilizer technology have become an effective breakthrough for the farmland quality protection policy proposed by the state of “realizing the transformation of agricultural production and operation models and taking the path of modern agricultural development with high output, safe products, resource conservation and environmental friendliness,” and the farmland “weight loss” policy has also been continuously upgraded in the agricultural materials industry.
Water-soluble fertilizers have quick fertilizer effects, dissolve quickly and have high use efficiency. Chen Qing, a professor at the College of Resources and Environmental Sciences of China Agricultural University, believes that “promoting integrated water and fertilizer technology is a systematic project that will inevitably bring about an integrated technological transformation in modern agricultural production. Data show that the use efficiency of conventional fertilizers in China is 20%-30%, while the use efficiency of water-soluble fertilizers is 70%-80%. Using water-soluble fertilizers not only saves water but can also reduce the total amount of fertilization. At the same time, water-soluble fertilizers have high nutrient content and comprehensive nutrition, significantly improving crop quality.
Water shortage and land shortage are the two major factors restricting China's agriculture, and saving water, fertilizer and land has become an urgent need for Chinese agriculture today. With the intensification and large-scale development of China's agriculture, the transformation of agricultural planting models, and the accelerated advancement of land transfer, the proportion of large-scale agricultural operations continues to increase, the proportion of cash crops continues to rise, the area of water-saving facility agriculture using drip irrigation and sprinkler irrigation expands rapidly, and integrated water and fertilizer technology has gradually become the “breakthrough” for China's modern agricultural development.
Faced with the reality that China's agriculture suffers more severely from water shortage than from land shortage, Kingenta responded quickly and actively carried out agricultural technical cooperation with Israel, using “desert agriculture” Israel as a water-saving model.
The “Kingenta-Livnat Agricultural Science and Technology Research Center,” inaugurated last year, launched a new round of cooperation with Israel's Arava Agricultural Research Center. The Kingenta Group conducted experimental demonstrations of water-soluble fertilizers for crops such as cucumbers and cabbage in the greenhouses of the Arava Research Center. Arava is located in the Negev Desert region of southern Israel, near the southern part of the Dead Sea. Groundwater extraction needs to reach as deep as 1,500 meters, and the water quality is highly saline. The average annual rainfall is only 30 mm, while evaporation reaches 3,000 mm. The arid natural environment with little rain is extremely unfavorable to agricultural production. In order to build fertile fields in the desert, farmers in Arava dug 30×30 cm trenches in the desert, filled them with compost and then covered them with soil. Relying only on average annual rainfall of 25 to 50 mm and some brackish water, and through a series of modern agricultural water-saving high technologies such as drip irrigation, integrated water and fertilizer technology and brackish water desalination, the Arava region produced 60% of Israel's exported vegetables and 10% of its fresh flowers, with annual export value reaching 250 million US dollars.
As a leader in China's new fertilizer industry and a strong promoter of integrated water and fertilizer technology, Kingenta, with the sense of mission and responsibility of an industry leader, will certainly continue to actively deepen exchanges and cooperation with Israel and promote cooperation between China and Israel in agricultural scientific research, talent training, technology introduction and achievement transformation. Through the joint efforts of both sides, using advanced technologies and models in the field of agricultural production from Israel and other regions, developing technologies and products suitable for China's agricultural production, optimizing the agricultural planting structure, improving the quality of agricultural products and the efficiency of agricultural production, and continuously advancing to further protect and improve farmland quality, realize China's agricultural modernization and further promote the development of “smart agriculture.”
“It can be said that integrated water and fertilizer technology is a major technology for developing modern agriculture, and even more the 'No. 1 technology' for developing a resource-saving and environment-friendly modern agriculture,” said Gao Xiangzhao, chief expert on soil, fertilizer and water at the National Agricultural Technology Extension Center. While continuously innovating and committed to the research, development, promotion and application of efficient new fertilizers, Kingenta actively carries out cooperative discussions with relevant parties in integrated water and fertilizer technology, jointly exploring the achievements, problems and solutions in the promotion of water-soluble fertilizers in China, advancing China's integrated water and fertilizer process, once again shouldering the historical responsibility of leading industrial upgrading, boosting China's environmental protection, green and efficient agricultural development, and performing its transformation from a mere agricultural materials manufacturer into a “world-leading plant nutrition expert and provider of planting industry solutions.”