How to turn a farm into a modern agricultural factory? Who is growing vegetables?

Who is growing vegetables?

"in popular terms, a plant factory is factory plant production, growing crops in the same way as mass production in a factory," Wang Haibo, vice president of the Hebei Academy of Agricultural and Forestry Sciences, told Economic Daily. Plant factories are characterized by standardized planting processes, uninterrupted growth time, and unrestricted growing seasons.

On the second floor of the Farmers' Union Plant Factory in Pinggu District, Beijing, the reporter saw that rows of wild vegetables such as Toona sinensis, plantain and Wutan vegetables grew on the "assembly line" of the "workshop". Their roots were either infiltrated in the nutrient solution or planted in the substrate, completely detached from the soil, and the leaves flourished under the illumination of LED light. On the first floor, rows of growth shelves cultivate edible fungi such as Agaricus blazei, Pleurotus ostreatus, Cordyceps sinensis and so on. Yao Xu, director of the project, said that this is a comprehensive and complementary agricultural production mode that takes advantage of the different growth environments required by different crops.

Light, temperature, moisture, fertilizer. In the plant factory, all this can be handed over to the computer system-- the agricultural Internet of things built by information technology, which integrates the temperature, humidity, PH, illumination and other sensor devices of the Internet of things system. Real-time monitoring of physical parameters in the environment.

Take the plant factory visited by the reporter as an example, under the illumination of artificial LED lights, crops can grow continuously, mature in a short time, and produce in multiple batches within a year; under the control of water and fertilizer system, nutrient solution and oxygen can "target" plant roots to transport nutrients. With the help of the central monitoring system, 54 people can easily work on 26000 square meters of crops. Using the remote control system of the mobile phone APP client, technicians can monitor and control the crops in the office. They only need to click on the mobile phone screen to complete the pollination, fertilization, watering and other steps.

There are many kinds of products.

The production technology of plant factories has taken the lead in Japan, Israel, Denmark and other countries where land resources are scarce, and its mode of operation has matured. In recent years, China has gradually built plant factories and continuously promoted the localization technology. However, Yao Xu said frankly that there are still three major problems in building a plant factory: high input costs, high operating costs, and low technology conversion rates. Take the plant factory set up by Zhejiang University in Changxing County, Zhejiang Province as an example, with an experimental space of 800 square meters, the initial investment is as high as tens of millions of yuan, and the monthly electricity expenditure caused by the use of electric lights and air conditioners after the operation of the project is also 200,000 to 300,000 yuan. At the same time, the cycle of scientific and technological transformation is also longer. It is understood that after an average of 19 generations of artificial domestication in 3 years, Farmers' Union of things has cultivated more than 100 kinds of products.

However, we can see that the variety of products in plant factories is also rich and varied. According to Yao Xu, the Farmers' Union currently produces five major varieties, including edible fungi, green leaves, eggplant fruits, medicinal materials and flowers. Under full load operation, it is estimated that the annual output of vegetables, melons and fruits is about 7 million kg.

Some people think that the vegetables in the factory "do not taste as good as those grown naturally". Wang Haibo said that the nutrients of crops cultivated in plant factories all rely on foreign additives and grow for a short time, so they may be different from naturally grown crops in taste, but there is no difference in nutritional value. At the same time, technicians can adjust and improve the taste of the product by adjusting the proportion of the nutrient solution.

You mustn't underestimate plant factories and think that their products are only crops. In fact, the "products" of plant factories also include providing technical services to enterprises and farmers, building production facilities, building a business model for enterprises plus farmers, and popularizing information technology to agricultural production. In addition, in response to the demand of urban people to have their own "vegetable garden", many plant factories have launched cost-effective "family farm equipment", and a "balcony farm" product of Farmers' Union of things is even less than 10,000 yuan.