Can China massively reduce food imports with super-efficient unmanned rice farms?

2026.03.22 06:20 Workers harvest rice in the fields of Sanhe Farm in Xuyu, Jiangsu province, China. Photo: Xinhua China’s drive to grow 90 per cent of its own grain by 2032 just gained a critical weapon: an unmanned ratoon rice farm that produces 50 per cent higher yields. By harnessing smart seedling care, sowing, growing and harvesting, a Chinese biotechnology company and scientists from several institutes have built the world’s first smart farm for regenerated rice. Located in the Datong Lake District in China’s central Hunan province, the smart rice farm has enabled an ancient but technically challenging technique of harvesting the second rice crop grown from the stubble of the first harvest. “The agricultural machinery goes to the fields, but I don’t go to the fields,” Xiong Jiaojun, the founder of Hunan Hongshuo Biotechnology Co, which is leading the project, told the China News Network on March 15. Built in 2023, the farm has nearly 33 hectares (82 acres) of experimental fields, with the entire intelligent, minimally staffed base covering 200 hectares. This year, Xiong said they deployed 20 sets of unmanned machinery, which can cover 666 hectares of rice fields. In recent years, the yield of their smart farm has reached more than 18 tonnes per hectare, or an increase of 6 tonnes per hectare compared with traditional two-season rice. Two-season or double-cropping rice is a system in which two rice harvests are produced on the same field in a year, requiring replanting after each harvest. Ratoon rice is a second-life crop grown from plant stubble left after the first rice harvest, and can be done with both annual and perennial rice varieties. This is considered a sustainable farming practice because it does not require replanting and allows for a higher yield on a single planting cycle. Though the technique has existed for a long time, it has not been used in modern farming practices because manually driven mechanical harvesters often crush the rice stubble and

原文链接: 南华早报