"The little girl picking mushrooms is carrying a big bamboo basket..." This popular song doesn't work in the suburbs of Shanghai - most of the mushroom pickers are people in their sixties and seventies. Chen Mingyun, a mushroom farmer in bravery village, Langxia Town, Jinshan District, joked: "where can I find a little girl picking mushrooms now? Only the old lady who picked mushrooms. "

It is difficult to find workers and high labor cost, which is a major bottleneck in today's agricultural development. This problem is even more prominent in the suburbs of Shanghai. It is common that "three workers are 200 years old" and "no one can be recruited for 200 yuan a day in the rush period".

On the one hand, the citizens are eager for cheap agricultural products, and on the other hand, the farmers are looking forward to reasonable profits. From the field to the dining table, the circulation link can be compressed, but the production cost such as labor has been bothering farmers. Therefore, in the newly released "action plan for promoting high quality agricultural development in Shanghai (2021-2025)" (hereinafter referred to as the "action plan"), it is clearly proposed to improve agricultural production technology and equipment.

Is the whole process of unmanned operation OK

The action plan points out that Shanghai will form 13 green pastoral areas with different characteristics. Among them, Jiading District digital unmanned farm area is the only area with the word "unmanned".

Here, the whole process of mechanized operation of rice from planting to harvesting has been realized, and 200 mu of experimental field has basically realized the whole process of unmanned operation: Based on 5g technology and Beidou Positioning, rice transplanter, self-propelled plant protection vehicle, harvester, etc. can automatically complete rice production operations such as transplanting, plant protection, harvesting, etc. under the condition of unmanned driving.

However, unmanned farms are still in the initial experimental stage. Zhang Xu, deputy director of Waigang Town Agricultural Service Center, said that unmanned operation has higher requirements on the regularity of the plot. For those irregular "leftover materials", restricted by the accuracy and depth of the existing unmanned operation, manual auxiliary operation is also needed. The stability of unmanned agricultural machinery and the cooperative operation between different agricultural machinery also have room for improvement. Therefore, the 200 mu experimental field is only the 1.0 version of the unmanned farm. This year, we plan to further improve the unmanned mechanical transformation of rice cultivation, management and collection, and realize the 2.0 version of the unmanned farm by the end of next year, striving to complete the construction of 1600 mu unmanned farm. By 2025, the 3.0 version of unmanned farm will be realized, and the demonstration application will be expanded to 10000 mu.

"Machine replacement" is also very important for vegetable production. The fresh vegetable industry area of Pudong New Area is located in Xuanqiao town. Tramy zhangjiaqiao base is one of the intelligent vegetable gardens in the area, and the degree of "machine replacement" is relatively high. Farmers say harvesting vegetables is one of the highest labor costs in vegetable production. For example, it takes about 8 hours for six workers to harvest chicken feather vegetables per mu. However, after using the automatic harvester and cooperating with two workers, the harvest can be completed in about 45 minutes, which is about 25 times more efficient than the traditional mode.

Li Li, general manager of modern agriculture of Tramy group, told reporters that the mechanization rate of vegetable bases in Tramy has exceeded 90%, and there are corresponding agricultural machinery and tools in all production links such as land preparation, ridging, sowing, transplanting, irrigation, harvesting and transportation. Moreover, different vegetables have different tools. Even for harvesters, there are several kinds: chicken feather and spinach need not be harvested with roots, but spinach need to be harvested with roots Therefore, the base is still developing new mechanical tools according to different varieties, and the mechanized productivity is expected to reach 100% this year.

According to the calculation, taking a 300 mu medium-sized vegetable base as an example, with mechanized equipment, only five farmers can be responsible for the whole process of production: two people operate the plant protection machine, three people operate the sowing, harvesting and other machinery. Li Li has another idea: "in the future, these machines and farmers can form an agricultural machinery service team to serve other production bases, further improve the efficiency of agricultural production and reduce labor costs."

From the two bases, "machine replacement" can effectively promote agricultural production to reduce costs and improve efficiency. Therefore, according to the action plan, by the end of 2025, Shanghai will build 100000 mu of unmanned grain production farms, a number of intelligent vegetable (fruit) gardens and 20000 mu of high standard green vegetable production bases.

Why there are "people" in unmanned farms

However, during the visit to the base, the reporter was also puzzled: Why are there "people" in the intelligent base?

"The harvester we use can really achieve unmanned operation through technology upgrading, but the cost may be several times or even tens of times higher than now." Li Li thinks that "replacing people with machines" is not "mechanization only". It is an important issue to reduce the cost of agricultural production to give consideration to both promotion cost and production efficiency.

Since last year, some Internet enterprises have made great efforts in digital agriculture, transformed a number of farms across the country, and introduced unmanned seeders, unmanned plant protection machines, and unmanned harvesters.

However, the transformation cost of some farms is not low, and the investment of unmanned equipment alone exceeds 10 million yuan, which is mainly paid by Internet enterprises. Although the farmers in the base benefit from it, they are also worried: if one day the Internet enterprises do not support it, can farmers still afford such equipment?

To solve this problem, it is necessary to explore the "affordable" intelligent production mode for farmers.

Chen Mingyun told reporters that although the old aunt is still picking mushrooms, the production efficiency is more than 30 times that of two years ago, but the labor cost has been reduced by more than 10 times, because there are new mushroom houses and new planting methods. Before planting mushrooms, Chen Mingyun had to prepare his own raw materials, ferment them naturally into base materials, then feed them manually, sow them, plant them under natural conditions, and finally find someone to harvest them. The whole process depended on experience and weather. Now, the mushroom house is operated automatically through the computer and Internet of things. A mobile phone can check the temperature, humidity, carbon dioxide concentration and other indicators closely related to mushroom growth and control them remotely. The base material comes from Shanghai Lianzhong mushroom cooperative, the leading agricultural enterprise in Langxia town. The mushroom seeds and the nutrients needed for their growth are all in the base material. The base material and the covering soil are evenly spread on the shelf of the mushroom house through the fully automatic feeding machine, and the suitable temperature and humidity are maintained. The mushroom can be harvested in 17 days.

"It's almost a fool's type of mushroom." Chen Mingyun said that this kind of mushroom produced in the mushroom house is jokingly called "three five brands": the mushroom house is transformed at one time for about 5 million yuan, with an annual output of 5 million yuan and an annual net income of 500000 yuan.

In Langxia Town, through government support and subsidies, farmers can spend about 1.5 million yuan to plant "three five" brand mushrooms. If there is no accident, they can recover their investment in three years. Chen Mingyun said that five local mushroom growers have started to grow "three or five brand" mushrooms, and other farmers are also excited, "because this is a new technology that farmers can afford."

"We are also studying the mechanized picking of mushrooms to further reduce the labor cost of growing mushrooms." Bao Dapeng, a researcher at the Institute of edible fungi of the Municipal Academy of Agricultural Sciences, said that mushrooms grow very closely, and mechanical picking is easy to damage the "appearance" of mushrooms, which will affect later sales. "So we hope to cultivate mushrooms with more consistent growth, lay the foundation for mechanized picking, and finally bid farewell to the" old aunt who picks mushrooms. "

Crack "less, less, more"

On the whole, farmers and agricultural enterprises are very supportive of "machine replacement" and think it can effectively reduce production costs. In the eyes of leading agricultural enterprises and agricultural experts, "machine replacement" can also solve the problem of "less, more and more" in traditional agriculture.

The so-called "less, less, more and more" refers to the fluctuation of supply and demand of agricultural products due to the difficulty of timely and accurate transmission of demand to the production end: the market has a large demand for certain agricultural products, but because agricultural production can not keep up with the demand, the supply exceeds the demand; when farmers find that there is demand in the market and large-scale production, the supply exceeds the demand. To solve this problem, we need to carry out the supply side structural reform of agricultural production, and the idea of "machine replacement" is also one of the ideas. 

People in charge of several smart production bases said that behind the "machine replacement" and "unmanned farm" are digital agriculture, which is inseparable from the Internet of things, big data, artificial intelligence and other new technologies. These technologies can accurately monitor the trend of agricultural production, combine market demand with production, and support agriculture in a targeted way.

The upgraded version of Jiading unmanned farm is digital farm. Zhang Xu said that on the basis of unmanned operation, it is necessary to realize the digitization of the whole process of rice cultivation, planting, management and harvesting, and collect the data of all agricultural machinery operation monitoring, ecological cycle monitoring, soil fertility monitoring, crop growth monitoring, annual operation statistical analysis and decision-making, so as to form a complete set of big data analysis and decision-making system, which will be an important part of agricultural production in the next year It's for reference.

In Tramy zhangjiaqiao base, there is a conference room almost without decoration, but the display screen occupying a whole wall is very conspicuous. This is one of the results of Tramy's exploration of digital Farm: smart agriculture platform.

The display screen of Li Lidian's mobile phone connected to the platform shows the temperature, humidity and growth trend of vegetable seedlings in different plots in different greenhouses of the base. Based on artificial intelligence technology, the system will automatically judge whether the growth of vegetable seedlings is normal and whether the growth environment needs to be adjusted. This intelligent agricultural platform can also remotely control the fertilization, pesticide application, irrigation and other operations in the greenhouse, and record all the data to form big data of agricultural production. 

With the data based on the first-line production, it can not only help to improve the "machine replacement", but also form big data experience, and promote the standardized production of non-standard agricultural products.

For example, he said: "in the past, it was people's experience to judge whether vegetables were" old "or" tender. ". However, we use the dietary fiber meter to digitize the "old" and "tender", and then monitor the agricultural products through the digital farm to predict the growth of vegetables and pick them when they taste the best. Besides, coriander and coriander vegetables have special taste. We use the electronic nose to

test the data and analyze it. We combine digital farms with digital technology to guide us to produce the best celery and parsley.

In order to achieve this goal, Qingmei cooperated with the Municipal Academy of Agricultural Sciences to establish the only modern agricultural industry research institute in Shanghai with industrialization as the core. It plans to build a 10000 mu digital farm in Shanghai this year to form a system of these digital explorations and promote them to other regions. It seems that the promotion of "machine replacement" is not only to liberate farmers from labor, but also to make use of digital technology to make agricultural production better serve market demand.

Article reprinted from: Shangguan news

Author: Ren Dan