By love-89.com As China’s BeiDou Navigation Satellite System continues to be widely implemented, the successful harvest in large agricultural regions is becoming increasingly linked to “looking up at the stars.” Let’s join our reporters as they explore how advanced technology is supporting modern agricultural practices.
CCTV reporter Jiang Shulin: Currently, the autumn grain harvest is in full swing across the country. Here at the BeiDou Building, a group of young professionals is engaged in a unique “autumn harvest.” Interestingly, there’s no one on the tractor—this is a test of BeiDou’s unmanned driving technology. This unmanned agricultural machine is equipped to automatically avoid obstacles, thereby minimizing unnecessary risks.
CCTV reporter Jiang Shulin: The effectiveness of these smart agricultural machines relies on the BeiDou agricultural service management cockpit. In Hubei Province, a unified agricultural network facilitates emergency deployments. For instance, if heavy rainfall targets a specific area during the critical harvesting period, adjustments can be made quickly to ensure the harvest and sowing proceed smoothly.
The harvest of over 30 million acres of early and mid-season rice is nearing completion, accompanied by the simultaneous sowing of winter rapeseed.
Here in Chibi City, Hubei Province, local initiatives over the past two years—including the establishment of smart management systems for fields, merging small and large plots, and integrated management of small watersheds—have enhanced grain yield per acre.
CCTV reporter Xu Wei: At a smart farm in Zhao Liqiao Town, Chibi City, rice has just been harvested, and rapeseed sowing has begun. You can see agricultural machines fitted with BeiDou terminals operating in the fields. The BeiDou smart agricultural management and service platform in Hubei allows us to track these machines’ movements and the acreage they cover. Remarkably, the operational accuracy of these machines has reached centimeter-level precision, leading to more accurate sowing.
This year, the average yield of the demonstration rice fields has exceeded 1,100 pounds per acre, an increase of 200 pounds compared to last year. For hilly land, such an increase is a significant achievement.
The secret to this increase is not only attributed to smart management but also to strategies like merging small plots into larger fields and integrated watershed management. Aerial shots of these farmland reveal organized plots, connected pathways, and irrigation channels—a picturesque agricultural landscape that was not the case before.
Prior to implementing the “small plots into large fields” approach, many individual plots had irregular shapes. By consolidating these into uniform fields, concentrated planting became feasible, which is advantageous for mechanized farming. Previously, the rental price for an acre of land was only 180 to 200 yuan a year; now, it can reach as high as 440 yuan, increasing rental income and overall profitability.
After harvesting rice, farmers are now able to sow rapeseed, achieving for the first time a cropping rotation of one season of rice followed by one season of rapeseed each year. This advancement is also a result of the past two years of comprehensive watershed management in the Yanglou Dong Port area. Historically, outdated irrigation systems meant that fields could only handle one crop of rice, leaving them idle in winter. Now, with interconnected channels and sufficient irrigation supply from the watershed regulations, farmers can cultivate two different crops in a single year.
(Reported by CCTV reporters Liang Lijuan, Jiang Shulin, Wang Yamin, Xu Wei, and Xiang Lin)