Agricultural Didi ride-hailing helps make the three-summer harvest easy
Original headline: "Didi-hailing 'machines'" catches on in rural Shandong
eTian internet platform (online image)
"You city people have Didi ride-hailing; we country folk have Didi-hailing 'machines,' and we no longer have to worry about finding combine harvesters for the summer harvest." Guan Penghe, a large-scale grain grower in Xinglongzhuang Town, Yanzhou City, Jining, Shandong, said, pointing to the order he had just placed on his phone.
The "Didi-hailing 'machines'" Guan Penghe referred to is the "eTian internet platform" installed on his phone, which includes "Zuoye Bao" for growers and "Kaopu Zuoye" for agricultural machinery operators.
The reporter saw on Guan Penghe's phone that he had entered a harvesting demand for his cooperative's 3,000 mu of wheat fields, with a quoted price of 35 yuan/mu, "wanting a combine harvester with high-tank grain unloading, and bringing its own self-unloading truck." Soon afterward, machinery operator Sun Xiao successfully grabbed the order and discussed details such as the harvesting time by phone.
"Internet Plus" links agricultural machinery operators and large-scale grain growers, becoming a new highlight of this year's summer harvest in Shandong.
"In the past we all looked for machines randomly, which led to delays in harvesting and wasted a lot of time." Guo Maoxian of the Qiangmin Crop Planting Cooperative in Liangbaosi Town, Jiaxiang County, said that this year, through a mobile phone, machinery operators can be contacted without leaving home.
In 2016, Shandong's wheat sown area reached 56.87 million mu. All this wheat had to be harvested and stored within just over half a month, and during this period it also had to face complex and changeable weather factors. To promptly bring in the grain from the wheat fields, communication between machinery operators and large-scale grain growers was especially important.
"One core benefit of 'Zuoye Bao' is knowing what your daily work efficiency is. For example, if someone else harvests 19 mu in an hour while I harvest 15 mu, I will reflect on whether I took too many detours during harvesting, or whether the harvesting point I chose was wrong." Machinery operator Luo Xiaofeng told the reporter.
Luo Xiaofeng pointed to the big-data statistics displayed in real time on "Zuoye Bao": the total harvesting area in Linyi City is 4.82 million mu, 22% has been worked so far, and current harvesting is between 45 yuan and 60 yuan per mu. "With this information, I know whether I should go to Linyi for cross-regional harvesting work."
At present, more than 120,000 planting households and about 50,000 agricultural machinery operators have registered on the platform. "Just like Didi ride-hailing, farmers and machinery operators can match supply and demand through the eTian internet platform, which is both convenient and cheap. Since the platform went online on April 5, as of June 6 it has found working machinery for the harvesting of 2.37 million mu of wheat, and this number is still rising rapidly." Cui Gongzhen, operations director of Yitian Network Technology Co., Ltd., said. (Xinhua News Agency, Jinan, June 6 dispatch, reporters Wang Yang and Pan Linqing)