Smart agriculture: one computer controls over 800 mu of parkland
For vegetable cultivation, a moderate amount of watering and fertilizing can ensure the best nutritional environment for crops, and moderate ventilation and light transmission can create the best climate environment for crop growth. But how can the optimum be achieved?
Crops need water for photosynthesis, and the water comes from soil or substrate. In recent years, Li Wenhu, chairman of Jiangsu Lugang Agriculture Development Co., Ltd., has found that by calculating the water content in the soil, it is possible to work out when crops carry out photosynthesis, thereby determining whether to supply water and how much water to supply.
As for fertilizing, fertilizer becomes various ions in the soil, and electricity is generated during the exchange of anions and cations. Measuring the electrical conductivity can gauge changes in ion concentration, thereby determining which nutrient the crops need and how much of it.
Based on this research, Jiangsu Lugang developed an automatic integrated water and fertilizer system, achieving the ideal state of "vegetables have water to drink when thirsty and fertilizer when hungry."
Recently, Wang Xutong, the company's soilless cultivation project manager, told this writer: "Our environmental irrigation system achieves intelligent control. Through one computer, the entire park of over 800 mu is automatically irrigated, and the entire climate is intelligently controlled. According to crop needs, we set the parameters, and every day it operates according to the given parameters. One person can complete work that would otherwise require 10 or dozens of people."
????Vegetable industry adopts BeiDou technology
Also a case of technological innovation, Shandong Yunxing Agricultural Technology Co. has set its sights on the field of vegetable traceability, applying BeiDou technology to the vegetable industry, which is the first such case in China.
At present, Yunxing Agriculture has attached passive high-frequency RFID chip tags to the commercial vegetable packaging boxes of Shouguang Lusheng Agriculture Co., writing information such as the vegetable brand and category into them when the vegetables are boxed, and installed active RFID readers on vegetable logistics vehicles, connecting them to the free passage gates for fresh agricultural products at expressway or toll road toll stations, eliminating the cumbersome process of on-site inspection and photographing, and achieving rapid passage by card reading.
According to reports, RFID is radio frequency identification, commonly known as electronic tags, and is a contactless automatic identification technology. It automatically identifies target objects and obtains relevant data through radio frequency signals; the identification work requires no manual intervention and can operate in various harsh environments. RFID can make up for the shortcomings of QR code management systems, such as the need for close-range optical scanning and small information storage capacity. RFID storage capacity is tens of millions of times that of QR codes, and reader speed is more than a hundred times that of scanning QR codes.
?Greenhouses + high technology achieve automation and intelligence
What happens when ordinary greenhouses meet high technology? The answer is that traditional greenhouses can also achieve automation and intelligence. The soilless cultivation greenhouse at the Jiangsu Lugang Agriculture Demonstration Park has a fertilizing machine. Shi Li, the person in charge of the greenhouse, said: "This fertilizing machine may not look large, but it can manage 150 mu of leafy vegetables and can sense important conditions needed for crop growth in the greenhouse, such as temperature, water temperature, pH value, and EC value."
In the soilless cultivation greenhouse of this demonstration park, Zheng Chunzhi, general manager of Shouguang Hongri Seedling Co., has already taken a fancy to the computer control equipment of the seedling greenhouse. This computer control system uses various sensors to collect parameters related to the greenhouse environment (such as air temperature, humidity, light, etc.) and controls various greenhouse equipment according to certain rules, thereby achieving precise control of the greenhouse environment. "It saves time, labor, and effort; this will be the trend of future development," said Zheng Chunzhi.
"Apply IoT technology to traditional agriculture, and control agricultural production through mobile platforms or computer platforms, making traditional agriculture smarter," said Li Wenhu.
Wang Leyi, 76, a leader in Shandong's vegetable greenhouse sector, believes that smart agriculture is the only way for agriculture to achieve modernization. Once smart agriculture is done well, modern agriculture is achieved. (Dai Yuliang, Shi Rukuan)