Key technologies and practice of unmanned farm in China

"Who will farm" and "how to farm" would be one of the common problems in agriculture all over the world in the future. Modern agriculture is the development direction for agriculture, and it is an effective way to solve the problem of "who will farm" and "how to farm". Smart agriculture has been the promising development direction in modern agriculture. Among them, the unmanned farm is one of the most important ways to realize smart agriculture. South China Agricultural University first constructed the unmanned rice farm in Zengcheng, Guangzhou, Guangdong Province of China in 2020. This unmanned rice farm has broken through four key technologies, including (1) Digital perception for the accurate perception of the operating environment, working objects, and machinery information of unmanned farms; (2) Intelligent decision-making for land reclamation, tillage, planting, sowing, field management, and harvest programs; (3) Precision operation for the automatic navigation and precision of agricultural machinery; (4) Intelligent management for crop growth, agricultural machinery operation, and farm management. Five functions were achieved, including (1) Full coverage production links of tillage, planting, field management, and harvesting; (2) Automatically transferring from the garage to the field; (3) Automatic obstacle avoidance and parking for safety; (4) Real-time monitoring of crop production, and (5) Intelligent operation with the decision-making precision. Remarkable economic, social, and ecological benefits were also achieved in this unmanned rice farm. The yield of the Simiao rice variety was 9934.35 kg/hm² in the unmanned rice farm in Zengcheng, Guangdong Province of China in 2021, 32% more than the local average yield of the same rice variety. The yield of ratoon rice was 17 988 kg/hm² in an unmanned farm in Qianshanhong Town of Yiyang, Hunan Province of China in two seasons of 2023. Therefore, the crops were planted well in the unmanned farm. 30 unmanned farms were constructed in 14 provinces in China by the end of 2022, including rice, wheat, corn, and peanuts unmanned form. The unmanned farm can provide the great potential to solve the "who will farm" and "how to farm" in the future. In order to further promote the development of unmanned farms, the following recommendation were proposed: (1) Enlarge the agricultural farmland scale and agricultural management scale, strongly support the agricultural cooperative, agricultural leading enterprises and large farm landowners to enlarge their farmland scale to suited the construction of the unmanned farm. (2) In light of the basic requirements of unmanned farm for lager farmland, flat field, continuous planting, and convenient farm track path and irrigation and drainage channel, land improvement and develop high-standard farmland should be strengthen . (3) Explore suitable unmanned farm models for different area, different agrotype, different crops, different cropping systems, and different production models. It is necessary to promote the construction of unmanned farms according to the local modern agricultural industrial parks. (4) Explore various talent training for unmanned farm. For example, it would be a good propose to train technicist and manager working for unmanned farm in vocational school. (5) It is necessary to speed up the formulation of relevant policies to promote the construction of unmanned farms, especially the financing of construction funds. To mobilize the enthusiasm of the government, enterprises and society to invest in the construction of unmanned farms, and appropriately increase the purchase subsidy amount of intelligent agricultural machinery should also be considered as soon as possible.