Improving agricultural mechanization level to promote agricultural sustainable development

Although great development has taken place in agricultural mechanization since reform and opening up, China still faces the big challenge in improving agricultural resource utilization as well as promoting the sustainable development of agriculture at present. As we all know, it is mainly the 5 factors, i.e. water, soil, fertilizer, pesticide and seed that affect sustainable development in the construction of China's agricultural modernization. The overall development of agriculture in China will be impeded if the resource utilization stays low. There exist some phenomena: 1) the irrigation water use is 360 billion m3 each year, while canal-system water use efficiency is only 0.4~0.6; 2) high-quality cultivated land is lacking; 3) nitrogen use efficiency is about 30%~35%, which is 20% less than developed country; 4) pesticide utilization is merely about 30%, while leads to severe environmental pollution; 5) the demand of seeding quantity is high while there are shortage of high-quality seeds and serious waste of seeds. Accordingly, several technologies and machines in PA (precision agriculture) were put forward in this article so as to meet the requirement of agricultural sustainable development: precision irrigation, precision plow, precision fertilization, precision spraying, and precision sowing. By reviewing the researches at home and abroad, the current situation of PA was analyzed and thus the methods to achieve the 5 mentioned key technologies were presented. Meanwhile, some other suggestions were proposed to push the agricultural mechanization to play a greater and more important role on the utilization of agricultural resource and agricultural sustainable development: 1) further strengthen the combination of agricultural machinery and agronomy as well as the basic study of related theory; 2) carry out in-depth studies on key technologies of maximum utilization of agricultural resource, especially in precision irrigation, precision plow, precision fertilization, precision spraying, and precision sowing; 3) enhance the capacity of independent innovation, namely, the capability of equipment design and manufacture related to PA; 4) accelerate extensive application of precision agricultural machine and equipment. Above all, this paper has provided a scientific guide and policy direction for improving utilization of agricultural resource, promoting agricultural mechanization and agricultural sustainable development. © 2016, Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering. All right reserved.