You don't have to buy agricultural machinery. Thousands of tillers can go online for you to choose.

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The problem of labor shortage in farmland is serious and mechanization is needed, but the cost of purchasing agricultural machinery is high and small farmers generally cannot afford it, so they often seek assistance from tillers. In order to integrate the mechanized farming services of different crops in various places, and to improve the utilization rate of existing agricultural machinery, the Council of Agriculture instructed 14 counties and cities to set up mechanical farming associations and set up a "agricultural machinery farming service system", known as "agricultural machinery Uber"! Let farmers go online and easily find the nearest contract tillers to quickly meet the farming services they need.

At present, the types of agricultural machinery provided range from common traction machines and transplanters to sweet potatoes and sugar cane harvesters, as well as peanuts, soybeans, rice, and large-scale miscellaneous grain (including sorghum, edamame beans, hard corn) combine harvesters. "not only rice, the scope of substitute tillage has been expanded to miscellaneous grains, tea and other crops, and the types of agricultural machinery are needed for planting, field management, and harvesting."

The purchase of agricultural machinery by Chen Bengao is beyond the affordability of small farmers. The picture shows the direct broadcasting machine (Photography / Lin Xiejun)

The platform mediates with farmers to improve the utilization rate of agricultural machinery

Chen Yanqing, chairman of the Taoyuan substitute farming Association, says that Guishan and Longtan in Taoyuan are concentrated areas of tea gardens, but manual tea picking takes time and effort, and if a tea picker is introduced, the manpower can be reduced by at least five times. "A tea garden originally required 10 people to pick tea. It only takes two people to help with one machine." In addition, Taoyuan City also has about 17000 hectares of rice planting area, and there is a demand for rice cutters every year. Therefore, he believes that the official unified integration of local farming services can facilitate farmers to search for operators, but also make the information of farming services transparent.

Lai Xilian, chairman of the Miaoli County substitute farming Association, points out that growing rice and miscellaneous grains such as sweet potatoes, black beans, and barley seeds in Miaoli have long been faced with the problem of manpower shortage, and farmers who buy agricultural machinery need four places to help with the ploughing in order to subsidize the high purchase cost. "A harvester costs 3 million!" In order to get back to Ben as soon as possible, I have to help (ploughing for him), and sometimes I have to pick up guests in other places. "

Now that there is a platform to help mediate between farmers and operators, he hopes to improve the utilization rate of agricultural machinery, so that contract tillers can find alternative farming land nearby. However, he also points out that in the future, more and more contract tillers will join the "agricultural machinery farming service system." how to ensure the quality of alternative farming services will require more checks by the government.

Fierce competition in the substitute farming industry, expanding the scope of service

Yang Shenglong, director-general of the Hualien County farming Association, said that there are many agricultural problems in Hualien, among which the shortage of workers is the most serious. Affected by population outflow and aging, most of the people who stay in Hualien are old farmers, and when they can't find manpower, they have no choice but to work hard. As the harvest of rice in the east is slower than that in the west, most of the Hualien contract tillers take advantage of the gap to develop in the west and look for substitute farming business.

Can the income of contract tillers be increased after the construction of an integrated platform? Yang Shenglong said with a wry smile that it is not necessarily because the competition among contract tillers everywhere is very fierce. "it is just that the income is increased or reduced, otherwise it will not be worth it." However, he believes that the greatest advantage of the establishment of the National Machine tillage Association and the establishment of agricultural machinery service platform is to provide a unified window for alternative tillage services, help farmers have a better understanding of alternative ploughing services, and expand the scope of services for tillers.

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