HARBIN, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- As autumn winds ripple through fields of fragrant rice at a Beidahuang farm in northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, grower Wei Guodong rubs a freshly plucked panicle between his palms, revealing plump, gleaming grains.
"This year's harvest looks solid," he says with a smile.
The farm belongs to Heilongjiang Agriculture Company Limited, the A-share-listed arm of Beidahuang Group, a major state-owned agribusiness in the province.
Wei's confidence had been boosted months earlier, during the seedling stage, when the greenhouses at the farm underwent a full-chain smart upgrade that is now reshaping rice production in one of China's major grain-producing regions.
Liu Dong, a manager at the 852 Farm branch, said the company invested this year to retrofit its seedling greenhouses with sensors, automated film rollers, smart irrigation valves and panoramic cameras. The system monitors soil pH, temperature, humidity and light around the clock, allowing a single skilled technician to manage up to three greenhouses and cutting labor costs by about 60 percent.
That same data-driven approach runs through the summer growing season, when crops are most vulnerable to weeds, pests and weather. At the farm, an AI laser-weeding robot uses industrial cameras to distinguish crops from weeds in milliseconds. With millimeter-level positioning and a weed-removal rate above 95 percent, the machine can cover 80 to 100 mu (about 5.3 to 6.7 hectares) a day, easing labor shortages while reducing herbicide use.
By harvest season, multispectral drones and ground instruments at Heshan Farm measure chlorophyll levels and crop maturity in soybean fields. The readings are cross-checked with satellite remote sensing to produce high-precision maturity maps that show which plots are ready, which need more time and when the optimal harvest window opens.
"In the past, we relied on experience. Now we rely on data," said Liu Zhaokai, deputy head of the farm's agricultural development department.
Beidahuang's changes reflect a wider push in Heilongjiang Province to deepen the integration of technology and modern farming. The province's overall agricultural mechanization rate has reached 99.34 percent, the highest in China, with smart-agriculture demonstration zones being built to shift production from "watching the sky" to "watching the screen" -- a microcosm of the thousands of farms across China embracing smart agriculture.
Nationally, the shift has been made a priority in recent policy documents. The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs has launched an action plan that calls for demonstration zones, agricultural big-data platforms and wider adoption of smart equipment.
Zhang Xingwang, Vice Minister of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, said that in 2025, the contribution rate of agricultural scientific and technological progress in China exceeded 64 percent. Smart agriculture applications now span the entire industrial chain, with more than 300,000 agricultural drones in use and annual drone operation area exceeding 460 million mu.
For farmers in the fields, the shift is already tangible. The rice in Wei's hands may still smell the same, but the way it was grown has been transformed from instinct and tradition to sensors, algorithms and screens. ■
