Technology beat farmers at growing strawberries in the inaugural
Smart Agriculture Competition organized by Pinduoduo Inc. (NASDAQ:
PDD), China’s largest agri-focused technology platform,
underscoring its potential to raise agricultural productivity and
increase food security.
The four technology teams, which employed data analysis,
intelligent sensors and greenhouse automation, produced an average
of 6.86 kilograms of strawberries, or 196% more than the 2.32
kilograms average for the three teams of traditional growers.
The technologists also outperformed farmers in terms of return
on investment by an average of 75.5%, according to the competition
organizers.
CyberFarmer.HortiGraph, a team made up mostly of researchers
from the China Agricultural University and National Agriculture
Intelligence Equipment Engineering Technical Research Center,
placed first in the competition.
The four-month competition, which ended on Nov. 30, 2020, was
co-organized by Pinduoduo and the China Agricultural University,
with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations as
technical adviser. The contest is the first cross-disciplinary
smart agriculture competition in China organized by a technology
company and university to develop planting methods to raise
productivity and yield.
The push into smart agriculture is part of Pinduoduo’s broader
goal of helping China realize the full economic potential of its
vast agriculture resources. One of the first steps in improving
productivity is to raise the level of digitization across the value
chain, from production to the transportation and sale of food.
Precision farming technology can help improve the crop on the
production end, while agriculture analytics can cut food wastage by
reducing mismatches in supply and demand. For the growers,
e-commerce allows them to tap on a much larger market than the
local wholesaler, freeing them from the constraints of
geography.
“Technology is the force multiplier that helps both the people
who grow the food and the people who eat it,” said Andre Zhu,
senior vice president of Pinduoduo. “Investing in agriculture
benefits the greatest number of people. We are happy to play the
role of matchmaker and enabler.”
Pinduoduo will explore promoting the technology developed by the
teams in the competition to working farms in China. The company
operates the largest agricultural e-commerce platform in China and
works with farmers from impoverished regions of the country to sell
their produce to urban consumers.
In the competition, the technology teams had the advantage of
being able to control temperature and humidity through greenhouse
automation, the organizers noted. They were also more precise at
controlling the use of water and nutrients. The traditional farmers
had to achieve the same tasks by hand and experience.
CyberFarmer.HortiGraph, the winning team, employed knowledge
graph technology to collect grower experience, historical
cultivation data, and strawberry image recognition. This was then
combined with water, fertilizer and greenhouse climate models to
create an intelligent decision strategy for growing
strawberries.
“This competition was a successful journey for the team to
explore how technology can be used in agriculture,” said Lin Sen,
the team leader for CyberFarmer.HortiGraph and a researcher based
at Beijing’s National Engineering Research Center for Information
Technology in Agriculture.
The Smart Agriculture Competition has inspired at least one of
the technology teams to commercialize their research, showing the
potential market demand for smart agriculture solutions.
Zhi Duo Mei, comprising a group of university researchers, set
up a company of the same name to provide its strawberry-planting
technology to farming cooperatives after receiving numerous
inquiries during the competition.
"In agriculture, traditional farmers distrust data scientists,
thinking they are flashy yet useless; data scientists also look
down on farmers, thinking they are too old-fashioned," said Cheng
Biao, the leader of the Zhi Duo Mei team. "Through this
competition, we realized the importance of combining both sides'
advantages and working together."
The competition helped Sun Yuqing, a member of Yanjiutian, the
all-women team of farmers in the competition, change her view of
technology.
“For agriculture to advance, we need new techniques, new
talent,” said Sun.
About Pinduoduo Inc.
Pinduoduo operates China's largest agri-focused technology
platform, providing an online marketplace that connects millions of
agricultural producers with consumers across the country. A pioneer
of interactive commerce and the consumer-to-manufacturer model,
Pinduoduo aims to bring more businesses and people into the digital
economy so that local communities can benefit from the increased
productivity and convenience through new market opportunities.
For more information on Pinduoduo news and industry
trends, please visit our content hub
at http://stories.pinduoduo-global.com/.
For media enquiries, please contact us at
internationalmedia@pinduoduo.com
Photos accompanying this announcement are available
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