After the vernal equinox has passed, in the main cotton-producing region of Xinjiang, the spring plowing in cotton fields is gradually starting from south to north. Right now, new changes are taking place.

On the morning of the 23rd, in a 50-mu farmland in the town of Erbatai, Kuqa County, Aksu Prefecture, Xinjiang, plowing, flat land, sowing, fertilizing, and mulching were all completed by three tractors with automatic navigation, and “smart” agriculture was in the south. Xinjiang began to show its skill.

This is a field demonstration meeting of the automatic navigation and driving system. It is a result display of cooperation between the agricultural equipment company Lovol Heavy Industries and South China Agricultural University in the field of intelligent information technology for agricultural machinery for many years.

In the cockpit of the tractor, the reporter saw that the driver's right front is equipped with a touch-sensitive LCD screen, tractor operation and field environment, etc., after clicking on the open satellite positioning navigation system, the tractor will then enter the automatic navigation mode The throttle and steering wheel are not controlled by humans, and they follow a set straight line at a constant speed. The driver looks outside the tractor.

Why do you want your tractor to navigate automatically? Liu Weiwu, contractor of the demo field, bought seven Levoa Persian tractors in one breath. “It is necessary to solve the problem that cotton cultivation is not straightforward and access is not allowed”. He said.

As a large cotton planter, Liu Weiwu's cooperatives have transferred a total of 14,000 mu of land this year and have planted cotton. He said that if the planting is not straight and the distance between broadcasts is wide and narrow, it will not only affect the land utilization rate, but when the cotton is to be topped and harvested at the follow-up, it will be difficult for large machinery that also has the function of autopilot driving. "Work".

To realize the full mechanization of cotton from sowing, pesticides, field management, and picking, the precision of the seeding must be high at first. The Chinese Academy of Engineering academician and South China Agriculture Co., Ltd. developed the unmanned cotton seeder in cooperation with Lovol Heavy Industries. University professor Luo Xiwen stressed.

In the past, seeding was not straight, and access was not accurate, relying on the driver’s hands and eyes.

“Xinjiang is a large field. It is endless, and there is no reference. Artificial driving is a test for the driver's ability. If you are careful, you will be paralyzed.” Academician Luo Xiwen recalled that when he came to Xinjiang for research several years ago, he saw farmers. In order to plant "straight," trotting along behind the sowing tractor, the ruler is not deactivated to measure the distance between broadcasts, "very hard."

Statistics from the National Bureau of Statistics show that Xinjiang's cotton sown area accounted for 60.8% of the country's total in 2017 and its output accounted for 74.5% of the country's total. With a total area of 7.8 million mu of cotton fields, the Akesu region has about one-third of the country's cotton fields and is the main cotton production base in Xinjiang.

However, compared to the highly mechanized northern Xinjiang region, the entire southern Xinjiang region where Aksu is located despite adequate geographical conditions, the degree of mechanization of cotton is very low, mainly relying on artificial cultivation, management and harvesting.

“If we switch to the machine-picking cotton model, the cost of one mu of land can be reduced by 370 yuan,” said Rocheman Kuerban, secretary of the Party Committee of the Agricultural Machinery Bureau of Aksu Prefecture. At present, labor is collected manually, and the labor force is hard to find every year. Some farmers Home cotton was cut off from last October until January of this year.

"If we pick mechanized cotton like the northern part of the country, the cotton farmers can finish the delivery in the most expensive October, effectively realizing a cost-saving increase," said Rocheman Kulbahn.

To this end, South Xinjiang is passing through the demonstrations of Liu Weiwu's large households and vigorously promote the machine-picking cotton pattern. In 2018, only 2.5 million mu of land will be planted in the Akesu region in machine-picking mode, of which 1.5 million mu will be harvested using machinery.

Being in the process of transformation from traditional agriculture to mechanized agriculture, the demand for mechanized and smart agriculture will grow. Luo Xiwen stated that the precision navigation and automatic operation system of agricultural machinery based on global satellite positioning has become the key to modern agriculture. It is now the period of force to catch up with the advanced level of agriculture in the world. This driverless sowing tractor with completely independent intellectual property rights is just the beginning.