Chinese technology companies push for smart farming
Chinese
companies are applying their technologies into farming in a bid to increase
agricultural production and efficiency, realize industry upgrades and reduce
costs, Chinanews.com reported on Feb. 28.
These
efforts, dubbed as smart agriculture, uses mobile devices or computers to
control agricultural production. It also includes agricultural e-commerce,
anti-counterfeiting traceability of food, agricultural leisure tourism, and
agricultural information services.
Lei
Zongxiong, who has worked for Alibaba Cloud, for over four years, took part in
Alibaba’s AI pig farming program in 2018. Through facial recognition, the AI
could assist farmers to know about and manage pigs’ health conditions.
Lei
said the massive application of AI into the industry is pioneering worldwide.
Now his team has created seven algorithms for many pig farms raising more than
1,000 pigs throughout the country.
Tencent,
a major rival of Alibaba, applies technologies into cultivating cucumbers in
greenhouses. Luo Dijun, a researcher with Tencent Al Lab, said the aim of smart
agriculture is to improve agricultural production efficiency.
Huawei,
JD.com and Baidu have also devoted efforts into smart agriculture.
With
more efforts and resources devoted into this field, the potential value of
China’s smart agriculture is expected to grow to $26.8 billion in 2020 from
$13.7 billion in 2015, according to market research company ASKCI Consulting
Co, Ltd.
Fu
Yao, a researcher with a fund management company, said the accession of
technology giants into the agriculture industry is good news, because they have
technological advantages, and could provide funds for small companies with big
potentials.
Industry
insiders said due to less advanced agricultural facilities, and the low
acceptance of smart agriculture in the rural areas, the development of smart
industry is still at a primary stage.
In
addition, challenges in need of tackling include the fact that technology
companies lack farming experience and the fact that agricultural enterprises
have insufficient understanding regarding information technology.
The
smart agriculture system developed by Huawei integrating sensors, Internet of
Things, cloud computing and big data
Photo:
Zhang Jingang, People’s Daily online
Chinese technology companies push for smart farming
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