Shanghai unveils plan to transform suburbs through unmanned farms with drone-grown crops

Tan KW

Publish date: Wed, 14 Aug 2024, 05:54 PM

Shanghai – China’s largest city and its financial capital – has unveiled an ambitious plan to leverage new technologies to transform large swathes of its suburbs into unmanned grain-producing farms, a local experiment in line with the country’s push to modernise agriculture as it pursues greater food security.

The metropolis will attempt to establish 20,000 mu (1,333 hectares) of fully automated farmland – roughly four times the size of New York City’s Central Park – by the end of next year, according to a plan released on Monday by the government of the city's Pudong district.

Automated farms – areas of agricultural production involving no human labour – are generating more interest as China seeks methods to improve efficiency to make up for issues of farmland quality and volume. These facilities purport to eliminate the human factor by utilising advanced technologies such as the Internet of Things, big data and robotics.

Shanghai's plan would begin with 12,000 mu of smart farms across eight townships by the end of the year, and fulfil the remainder of the goal by the end of 2025.

Unmanned farms would be equipped with intelligent tractors, planting machines, smart sprayers, drones and combine harvesters, the city said. A central cloud platform would manage and analyse data to maintain operations.

Successful projects, after passing assessment, will receive a reward of 700,000 yuan (US$97,522) per 1,000 mu from the municipal government, and would be eligible for an additional reward from the district up to the same amount.

Shanghai’s proposal comes amid a broader trend in China, as the nation of 1.4 billion people seeks to reshape its agriculture system and boost efficiency to ensure food security, an issue Beijing has deemed a priority as trade uncertainties grow.

China’s vision of modern agriculture is letting “ploughing cattle retire, ‘iron cattle’ work” as “farmers live in cities and experts stay to farm”, said agricultural engineer Luo Xiwen, a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, in an interview last month with Outlook Weekly, a publication of state news agency Xinhua.

Despite a threefold increase in rice yields over the past 70 years, China has lagged behind advanced agricultural economies in other food crops such as corn and soybeans. The per-unit yield of both is around 60 per cent of yields observed for those crops when planted in the United States, according to figures frequently cited by Chinese officials.

Agricultural aviation – the use of unmanned vehicles in farming, an adaptation thought to improve efficiency and output – also “faces challenges” in terms of standards, regulations, core research and development, Luo was quoted as saying. “There is still a long way to go.”

Though it is one of China’s most highly developed urban settlements, Shanghai only produces enough grain to account for one-sixth of its own supply. It does, however, boast the country’s highest land use efficiency in grain production, producing an average of 534kg per mu in 2023, according to data from the Shanghai Economic and Information Technology Commission.

Other localities are exploring their own pilot programmes. A 1,000-mu demonstration area has begun operations on the state-owned Qixing Farm in Heilongjiang, the breadbasket province in the country’s northeast, the Economic Daily reported on Monday.

Heilongjiang governor Liang Huiling said at a news conference in April the province has set out to establish 20 large-scale unmanned farms by 2025.

- SCMP

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