If dinner parties are your thing, spare a thought for the Chinese government’s agricultural ministry. With 1.2 billion mouths to feed, its problems amount to a little more than making sure you have six place mats. Although China’s population growth has slowed, the pressure to ensure that agricultural supplies are readily available is constant.
In the last 20 years, rapid industrialisation in China has led to pressure on land use. Cities are spreading over some of the most arable land in the country. As a result, the land that is reserved for agriculture must be used more efficiently.
Spatial technology is a significant part of the solution. GIS, GPS and remote sensing technology are all being used to make agricultural businesses more efficient.
Worldwide, spatial technology vendors are eyeing the Chinese market as it becomes increasingly mechanised. Rob Kiernan of Rinex, a Perth-based GPS manufacturer, speaks for most manufacturers: ‘The potential will be enormous once the Chinese farming sector has large-scale machinery.’
In the next five years, China aims to establish a nationwide land use monitoring system using remote sensing technology. Those areas experiencing rapid economic growth will be the focus of the plan. As the pressure on land use is greatest near urban areas, the system will be focused on cities with a population of more than half a million people.
The Agriculture Ministry will release annual reports on China’s land use, and especially on how things are changing. It will also note illegal land use. Information for this project will mainly be gathered by remote sensing. Since 1998, data sent from French and US satellites has been used to monitor land use in large cities. This has helped the government make policies for urban construction and agricultural development.
Around the country there are several examples of spatial technology being employed to lift agricultural productivity and improve countryside management. For instance, Shandong Province aims to become a showpiece for the use of GPS technology to enhance agricultural output. With a Y2 billion ($470 million) investment, the Hengdian Group aims to turn the Huang He (Yellow River) Delta into 40,000 ha of pasture. To begin operations, the Hengdian Group has bought agricultural machinery, including tractors equipped with GPS, blade machines and broadcast sowing machines.
The Hengdian Group owns businesses in several different industries – ranging from lawns to fodder to dairy and meat products – and will be boosting investment in these to complement its agricultural investment. Hengdian’s president, Xu Wenrong, is leading the investment. Aged 65, Xu is one of China’s most famous entrepreneurs.
With his 1998 assets estimated at $650 million, Xu has the firepower to invest in leading-edge technologies such as GPS. His interests are quite diversified, ranging from silk manufacture to a film studio.
To provide the bedrock of education in farm technology, the Ministry of Science and Technology has launched the Spark Program. The program has been targeting rural areas and aims to use research findings and agro-industrialisation techniques to improve farm income. The project aims to educate the rural economy on advanced farming techniques and farm produce processing technology. It provides demonstration projects to educate students on using technology to enhance productivity. Originating in 1986, the program now has over 100,000 such projects, which created $60 billion in profits over the past five years.
There are 145 state-level Spark Program areas which have led the development of rural businesses. Over 60 million farmers have received technical training over the past 15 years.
There are a number of precision agricultural techniques that are becoming increasingly relevant to China’s farming industry. Digital application controllers, GPS technology and sensors are techniques used to automatically match agricultural inputs and practices to variable conditions within a field.
The benefits are many: reduced waste, higher yields and reduced environmental impact. However, the high initial investment often means that small farms without spare capital lack the economic ability to take up such techniques.
But China’s relentless agricultural industrialisation and growth in farm size are increasing the acceptance of precision farming techniques. Vehicle management and guidance has been a key GPS technology, successfully employed by farms worldwide, and will be incorporated into Hengdian’s project in Shangdong.
This is an area being carefully eyed by Australian GPS specialists such as Rinex. ‘The most significant GPS technology being used in the Australian market today is for yield mapping and vehicle guidance. The introduction of yield monitors
some years ago as retrofit equipment has led to these monitors being standard equipment on all new combine harvesters in Australia today. The ability to map crop yields with the use of a GPS has been widely adopted as the starting point in precision agriculture,’ Kiernan says.
China’s varied climate will create both barriers to and opportunities for the introduction of precision farming techniques. But Kiernan says vehicle guidance systems are becoming more widely accepted, because of their ability to work in environmental conditions which previously precluded the use of traditional forms of vehicle guidance, such as foam marking systems.
'Foam has many problems. It is restricted to daylight hours. Hot conditions lead to foam evaporating too quickly. In windy conditions the foam gets blown across the paddock. The foam falls into tall stubble or crops, which hides it from view. GPS vehicle guidance is unhindered by these environmental factors.’
Another advantage of precision agriculture is its lower environmental impact. In recent years China has made pollution reduction a high priority, as the health of both the community and the economy are increasingly affected by it.
Another company that has been active in China is Space Imaging, which uses images from its Ikonos satellite to underpin precision agricultural techniques and the reduction of environmental impacts. For instance, information produced by Ikonos could reveal that certain acreage needs one part per million of fertiliser or pesticide in one area but as much as one part per thousand in another; this information could dramatically improve crop health and increase yield. In the case of environmental conservation, the information could forecast coastal erosion and associated building loss.
It also has application in the farmer’s database, which might contain layers describing field topography, soil types, surface drainage, subsurface drainage, soil testing results, rainfall, irrigation, chemical application rates, and crop yield. Once this information is gathered, it can be analysed so that the farmer can better understand the relationships between the various factors that affect crop production in a specific location.
GPS farming systems can provide precise guidance for field operations, or collection of map data on tillage, applications, weeds, planting, infestations by insects and disease, cultivation and irrigation.
China’s continued agricultural reform is producing a greater number of larger farms. Bigger farms are more open to the uptake of farming technology because they have greater access to the capital to enable them to do so.
Along with agriculture, forest management has caught the eye of China’s state planners. In the Xishuangbanna Nature Reserve in southwest China’s Yunnan Province, a Y15.38 million ($3.6 million) program has been established to collate information on local animals and plants. GPS and GIS technology are being used to monitor the local wildlife. Xishuangbanna now has more than 5000 kinds of plants identified, 341 of them rare. The region is also home to more than 2000 species of animals, of which 129 species – including Asian elephants, buffalo, wild ox and gibbon – are under state protection.
Sichuan Province has recently begun to develop an urban management GIS for the Sichuan Urban Environment Project Office. PlanGraphics, Inc, a subsidiary of Integrated Spatial Information Solutions, has been awarded the $2.6 million contract. The aim of the project is to provide a safe environmental setting for the sustainable long-term economic growth of urban areas in the Sichuan Province. PlanGraphics aims to develop a system that will improve urban infrastructure and environmental information management for various agencies in western China.
The project is backed by the World Bank and has several objectives. It will provide system development and technical training for a provincial decision support system, and an office automation system for the Sichuan Provincial Construction Bureau, and will interact with other urban decision support systems. It will also provide information to the wastewater and water supply infrastructure. China’s economic growth – around 7–8% pa – will undoubtedly put contin- ued pressure on land, especially around urban areas. Further, the rise in income and the growth of a middle class have given environmental issues greater prominence. The agricultural reforms and the mechanisation of the countryside are all foundations for the continued uptake of new technologies, including precision farming techniques. With many larger farms now, and the consequent greater access to capital, the market for spatial technologies is set to go from strength to strength.
