Zoomlion Deeply Involved in China's Agricultural Modernization

Yuan Longping and Zoomlion jointly launched a national demonstration project on agricultural-agronomic integration in super-high-yielding hybrid rice production. Yuan Longping is known as the "father of hybrid rice," while Zoomlion is a leader in agricultural machinery that is scaling new heights and a company committed to China's agricultural modernization. 

Obvious Hindrance to Agricultural Modernization

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China is currently in a period of rapid development from traditional agriculture to modern agriculture, and the mechanization of agriculture is seen as the key to accelerating and promoting the transformation and upgrading of traditional agriculture. 

The Central Rural Work Conference previously held in Beijing pointed out the need to "strengthen weak links in agricultural operations and follow-up services and promote the sustainable development of agricultural mechanization." 

The relative backwardness of agriculture machinery and agronomics in China is an obvious hindrance to agricultural mechanization. 

"China's agricultural mechanization has entered a stage of rapid all-round development. However, the backwardness of agriculture and agronomics is a prominent issue," notes Liu Xian, Director of the Ministry of Agriculture's Department of Agricultural Mechanization Administration. 

"To ensure an effective supply of food, the most critical issue to be addressed is promoting mechanized rice-growing technology, and there is increasing reliance on mechanization in the plowing, planting, field management and harvesting stages of production for dependable and high yields, which means there is an increasingly urgent need for agricultural-agronomic integration," Liu Xian explained.

Domestic and international experience shows that promoting agricultural modernization without agricultural-agronomic integration means agricultural mechanization will not succeed in the true sense. 

Take the mechanization of rice planting, for example. About 40 years ago, China invented a rice transplanter, but did not pay attention to agronomics, which resulted in slow mechanization of rice production. Although Japan started down this path later than China, because it integrated raising rice seedlings with mechanized transplanting, it quickly achieved the highest level of mechanization in rice production in the world. 

At the launch ceremony, Yuan Longping stated that, to achieve bumper grain harvests and allow farmers to significantly improve their grain yields, in-depth research in agricultural-agronomic integration is required as well as an overall improvement in the efficiency of machine harvesting. 

During bilateral cooperation, the national hybrid rice R&D team will use their technical experience in rice breeding, cultivation, planting, etc., to guide and help the Zoomlion team to produce equipment more suited to the requirements of high-yield rice farming and scientifically improve the way agronomics are adapted to agricultural machinery in order to increase efficiency. The Zoomlion team is starting with product design and development in the rice seedling cultivation phase and carrying out continuous testing and improvements to enhance the reliability and applicability of its agricultural machinery. 

Zoomlion's Integration Advantage 

Zoomlion is a leader in China's agricultural machinery industry and offers the most complete product range of any national agricultural machinery company. Zoomlion's business currently basically covers the breeding, soil preparation, planting, field management, harvesting, drying and storage processes for major domestic crops. In the course of its R&D on agricultural equipment, Zoomlion has not only focused on the products themselves, but always also focused on effective integration with agronomics. 

Back in 2012, the Zoomlion agricultural equipment R&D team joined forces with a hybrid rice research team led by Yuan Longping to launch the National Hybrid Rice Agricultural-Agronomic Integration Project and delivered the first batch of machines from the project to the National Hybrid Rice Research and Development Center. It is worth mentioning that this is the first agricultural-agronomic integration project in China in which an expert in agronomics has worked closely with a commercial enterprise. 

Yuan Longping said of this cooperation, "Zoomlion is constantly improving a series of products for the mechanization of the entire process of rice production in order to provide farmers with high-performance, highly efficient, cutting-edge agricultural machinery products so they can enjoy significant improvements in the level and quality of their harvests, which is a wonderful and gratifying thing." 

In fact, it is not just mechanized products for rice production, Zoomlion is also effectively integrating agricultural machinery and agronomics in the areas of sugar cane and cotton production. 

The AS60 sugar cane harvester launched by Zoomlion at the 2014 China International Agricultural Machinery Exhibition last October was a fine example of agricultural-agronomic integration. The sugar cane harvester was developed based on Chinese sugar cane agronomic conditions and overseas advanced technology, and it is more efficient, reliable and easy to use than other similar products. 

An expert from the National Hybrid Rice Engineering Technology Research Center who participated in the project said that Zoomlion's agricultural machinery is the "best of the latecomers" and the company has become a leading agricultural machinery manufacturer, with an impressive innovation-driven model that develops agricultural-agronomic integration. 

The Central Rural Work Conference in 2014 clearly stated the primary task of agricultural modernization and pointed out that agricultural modernization should be innovation-driven. This shows that an acceleration of agricultural-agronomic integration and improvements to factors hindering China's agricultural modernization are imminent. As such, people from various fields are looking forward to the launch of the demonstration project on agricultural-agronomic integration in super-high-yielding hybrid rice production and optimistic about the development prospects for Zoomlion agricultural equipment.