Agricultural equipment development still needs more horsepower
At present, the comprehensive mechanization level of cultivation and harvest for major crops in China has reached 63%, but the "weak spots" in agricultural equipment are still very obvious, making it impossible to fully meet the needs of modern agricultural development and restricting the improvement of the level of agricultural mechanization.
Filling in the "gap" of supply-demand asymmetry
This year's summer grain harvest season coincided with the rainy season, and grain mold was relatively common. However, the widespread application of dryers will minimize losses from grain mold. "Grain drying is currently a weak spot in the full mechanization of grain production. Sales of grain dryers have been booming this year. Our company produces 500 grain dryers a month, but demand still exceeds supply. We expect to sell 3,000 units for the whole year, doubling sales compared with previous years," Wang Jinfu, vice president of Zoomlion, said in an interview with a reporter from Economic Daily.
The comprehensive mechanization level of cultivation and harvest for major crops in China has increased year by year, but the development of agricultural mechanization is very unbalanced. Data show that wheat has basically achieved full mechanization; however, in most sugarcane-growing areas, the mechanization level of deep sugarcane field cultivation is less than 20%; the mechanized tillage level for cotton planting is about 94.9%, the mechanized sowing level is 65.6%, and the mechanized harvesting level is very low; the overall production mechanization level of rapeseed is relatively low, with a cultivation and harvest mechanization level of 39.2%, of which the mechanized harvesting level reaches only 20.3%.
Experts believe that in the future China's agricultural mechanization should strive to break through bottlenecks in operations for rapeseed, cotton, sugarcane, and others, further raise the level of mechanized rice transplanting and mechanized corn harvesting, and achieve development from grain crops to cash crops in mechanization, from open-field agriculture to protected agriculture in mechanization, from crop farming to post-production handling and processing of agricultural products, and extend from mid-production to pre-production and post-production.
Crossing the "slope" of "smart agricultural machinery manufacturing"
The Dongfanghong LW4004 continuously variable transmission tractor unveiled at the National "12th Five-Year Plan" Science and Technology Exhibition held in Beijing this year is a major breakthrough in China's agricultural machinery research, development, and manufacturing, breaking the foreign technological monopoly on continuously variable transmission tractors. According to reports, this tractor made breakthroughs in core key technologies for heavy wheeled tractors such as continuously variable transmission systems and intelligent control and management systems, and can perform heavy-load farmland operations such as deep plowing, deep loosening, and combined land preparation.
The gradual integration of agricultural equipment with intelligent and information technologies will promote the transformation of agricultural machinery manufacturing toward high-end, efficient, and intelligent development. In recent years, power-shift tractors with electronic control systems produced by YTO Group Corporation have been put on the market; power-shift tractors produced by Lovol Heavy Industry have achieved remote monitoring and intelligent control of tractor operations; domestically produced large cotton pickers and large sugarcane harvesters have successively come out, marking breakthrough progress by Chinese agricultural machinery enterprises in moving toward the mid-to-high end.
Informatization is an unavoidable hurdle in realizing "smart agricultural machinery manufacturing." Global agricultural machinery manufacturing has now entered the information age, and information technology has penetrated every link in the agricultural machinery industry from research and development, production, and sales to service. Agricultural machinery products have transformed from purely mechanical products into a new generation of intelligent machinery products closely combining machinery with information technology. At present, China's agricultural machinery informatization has only just started, the technology and systems are not yet very complete, some key technologies are still under research and development, and the quality of components is still not up to standard.
Gao Yuan'en, honorary president of the China Agricultural Machinery Industry Association, believes that for China to form an overall informatization solution for agricultural production by 2025, there is still a long way to go. It is necessary to achieve leapfrog development through innovation-driven growth, introduce, digest, and absorb mature foreign technologies, focus on developing power-shift and continuously variable high-efficiency large tractors, develop multifunctional high-efficiency grain combine harvesters, large sugarcane harvesters, and cotton pickers, and develop high-end agricultural equipment and key components such as large combined operation implements.
Taking the "sunlit avenue" of systemic integration
Agricultural mechanization is a systematic project involving many aspects such as machinery research and development and manufacturing, land environment, variety breeding, cultivation methods, processing methods, and production and operation organization methods. It requires joint efforts and systematic research and advancement by all departments and all parties, including agricultural machinery manufacturing enterprises, processing enterprises, relevant government departments, and farmers.
Guangxi is a major sugarcane-growing area in China. In recent years, the level of sugarcane mechanization has increased somewhat, but it is still less than 5%. Zhao Renwei, head of the sugarcane harvester project research and development at Zoomlion Heavy Machinery Company, believes that this is mainly because China has not yet established a sugar production system from sugarcane variety research and development to planting, harvesting, and processing. At present, sugarcane production in Guangxi is still dominated by smallholder farming by individual households. In hilly areas, plots are small, slopes are steep, land is not concentrated, and planting is not standardized, which limits the promotion of agricultural machinery operations.
Land consolidation is the most important link in fully realizing agricultural mechanization in China. It is necessary to strengthen the construction of high-standard farmland, actively promote land consolidation, and develop appropriately scaled contiguous planting to create conditions for agricultural machinery operation services.
The entry of large domestic sugarcane harvesters into the market will help break through the bottleneck of mechanized sugarcane harvesting. Zhang Lixin, chairman of Zhengfeng Agricultural Machinery Cooperative in Longzhou County, Chongzuo City, Guangxi, told reporters that their cooperative provides agricultural machinery operation services for local large sugarcane growers. Last year, they spent 1.3 million yuan (with a national subsidy of 650,000 yuan) to purchase one chopper-type sugarcane harvester produced by Zoomlion. It can harvest 50 to 60 tons a day, equivalent to 50 to 60 laborers. To ensure that the harvested sugarcane is delivered to the sugar factory in time, the cooperative signed sugarcane harvesting service agreements with large sugarcane growers and also agreed with the local sugar factory on the harvesting time and location, with the sugar factory dispatching vehicles to transport the sugarcane. In this way, the cooperative, large sugarcane growers, and the sugar factory formed a community of shared interests to jointly advance the mechanization of sugarcane harvesting.