Xiong'an New Area: "Future City" Explores "Future Agriculture"
Xinhua News Agency, Shijiazhuang, June 24 (Reporters Gong Jinglu and Zhao Hongyu) — Entering the Xiong'an Smart Agriculture Science and Technology Park located in Liangmatai Town, Rongcheng County, Hebei Xiong'an New Area, rows of modern greenhouse for growing tomatoes are lined up one after another. Inside the greenhouse, the skylight curtains slowly open under the command of the environmental control system, the integrated water and fertilizer equipment quietly delivers nutrients, and suspended sensors transmit parameters such as temperature and humidity back to the central control room in real time.
Hebei Xiong'an Ronggang Agricultural Technology Co., Ltd. operates here. Xu Lu, head of the company's production technology department, said that by simply inputting various data in advance, the artificial intelligence system can automatically adjust equipment such as fans and rollers according to the different growth stages of tomatoes, precisely controlling the temperature, humidity, and light inside the greenhouse. This model not only keeps the crops in the best growing environment but also saves energy to a certain extent.
There are also tireless "physical helpers" in the greenhouse. At the greenhouse site, a reporter saw a smart plant protection device smoothly shuttling between ridges and operating automatically. Xu Lu said that compared with traditional manual labor, the smart plant protection device not only sprays more evenly and accurately but also greatly improves management efficiency. Having tasted the "sweetness" of technology empowerment, the company recently partnered with research institutes to develop a tomato picking robot. As a competition project, this device will appear at the third Xiong'an Future City Scene Expo Smart Agriculture Technology Application Competition.
Xiong'an's continuous exploration and innovation in the agricultural field also benefit from the support of this activity. Wang Wei, deputy director of the Xiong'an Future City Scene Expo Scene Innovation Service Center, said that unlike simple displays of technological achievements, the Scene Expo can close the loop of R&D, exhibition, supply-demand matching, and implementation. With this advantage, Xiong'an New Area is attracting more and more agricultural research talents and agriculture-related enterprises.
Smart agriculture is not only bearing fruit in fine-scale specialty planting but also "growing rapidly" in vast fields.
In Dawang Town, Anxin County, Hebei Xiong'an New Area, over 2,000 mu (about 133 hectares) of rice are lush green, with mini sensors scattered across the fields recording various crop growth data around the clock. This highly tech-savvy farmland is the base of the Fuxi Farm headquarters built by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and also an important experimental field for the "future city" to explore "future agriculture."
Reporters learned that the ditch and circuit systems in the farmland have been completed, and final finishing work is underway. Once the farm is fully built, it will not only realize intelligent operations across the entire chain of crop farming, including plowing, sowing, managing, and harvesting, becoming a testing ground for most agricultural technologies of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, but also serve as an open and shared innovation platform, widely receiving and incubating the application of various cutting-edge agricultural innovation projects.
In Xiong'an, technological innovation and agricultural industry are deeply integrating.
Entering the third-generation Honghu Intelligent Agricultural Machinery R&D Base, R&D personnel from the Chinese Academy of Sciences' agricultural intelligent technology team are concentrating on technical breakthroughs for the third-generation intelligent agricultural machinery, covering frontier fields such as unmanned driving, three-electric systems, and high-precision positioning. Currently, among the core R&D team of 50 to 60 people, more than 30 are permanently stationed in Xiong'an for frontline work, while the algorithm team in Beijing makes special trips to Xiong'an every week for meetings and joint debugging.
Green ecological agriculture is one of the five major industries in Xiong'an New Area. A relevant official from the Xiong'an New Area Agriculture and Rural Bureau said that in the future, they will make good use of the National Digital Agriculture Regional (Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei) Innovation Subcenter platform, promote the transformation of various advanced agricultural scientific and technological achievements, accelerate the integration and application of technologies and equipment in fields such as smart planting in large fields and facility agriculture, and new energy intelligent agricultural machinery, creating a "Xiong'an model" for smart agriculture development in the future city.
