How to grow cotton “easily”

Behind the good cotton harvest, there is an exciting change: in the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, cotton cultivation has long ended the “hard” farming of hands and shoulders, and the “relaxed” mode of various agricultural machinery taking turns is beginning. .

For national cotton, look to Xinjiang, and for Xinjiang cotton, look to the Corps. In 2021, the cotton planting area of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps reached 13.05 million acres, and the mechanical harvesting area was 12.3 million acres. With a quarter of the country’s area, it produces more than one-third of the country’s cotton. The XPCC cotton not only has obvious quality advantages, but also maintains a high level of mechanization, scale, water-saving irrigation, and scientific and technological support. At present, the comprehensive mechanization level of cotton farming and harvesting in the Corps reaches 98.3%, and the mechanized mining rate reaches 94.2%. How did they realize the full mechanization of cotton operations? What are the implications for promoting full-process mechanization of other crops? A reporter from the Economic Daily recently went deep into the fields to find out.

Smooth agricultural machinery application system

Abibula Yasheng is 36 years old and an employee of the 49th Regiment of Tumushuk City, the 3rd Division of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps. He planted 80 acres of cotton land and had just returned home to rest after harvesting cotton from a nearby ginnery. “I never imagined that growing cotton would also give me free time to drink tea.” For Abibula, who has been growing cotton for 15 years, he was so busy during the cotton picking season in the past that all he wanted to do when he got home was sleep.

“In the past, manual picking of more than 20 acres of cotton had to be busy from mid-September to the end of the year.” The cotton picking season was once the most troublesome time for Abibula. Because the labor was very tight, he sometimes had to hire a car to travel hundreds of kilometers away. The county hires cotton pickers to help with picking. “We send them to the fields in the morning and bring them back to their homes at night. Late at night, we have to manually load the cotton picked during the day into the gin factory, which is too tiring.” Abibula recalled that the cost of manual picking was very high at that time, with one acre of land costing more than 700 yuan.

“How can a machine outperform people?” A few years ago, Abibula heard that a nearby company was experimenting with cotton picking machines, and he made a special trip to see the results. “One cotton plant passes through the cotton picker and the cotton comes out. It is fast and saves manpower, but there are a lot of cotton stalks and leaves.” The high impurity rate of cotton makes Abibula feel uneasy.

As the level of technology continues to improve, machine cotton picking has finally entered thousands of households. “This year, the cotton picking machine took only 3 hours to pick out the 80 acres of cotton land. The purchase price of machine-picked cotton in the gin factory is 10.5 yuan per kilogram, the yield per mu is about 350 kilograms, and the machine-picking fee per mu is 200 yuan, excluding various items The cost and income are 280,000 yuan.” This day was the second time Aibibula went to the ginnery to deliver cotton. “Today I picked some cotton from the field that cannot be picked by the cotton picker. There are 300 kilograms, and I can earn more than 3,000 yuan more.” .

Nowadays, when it comes to cotton cultivation, Aibibullah bluntly said that it is “easy”. “The whole process of plowing, sowing, irrigation and fertilization, picking, and recycling of residual film can be mechanized. There are also corresponding technical specifications for different stages of field management. “. After resting, he has contacted agricultural machinery to carry out operations such as crushing straw in the field and recycling residual film.

Thanks to the Corps’ long-term promotion of cotton mechanization, growing cotton as “easily” as in Abibula is becoming the norm for Corps employees. “The cotton market is good this year, and employees are highly motivated to pick. We have more than 13 million acres of cotton land, and mechanical picking can be completed in more than a month.” Maping, director of the XPCC Agricultural Machinery Technology Promotion Station, told reporters, “Currently, the XPCC has planted cotton. Realize the full mechanization of farming and harvesting.”

“Starting from the actual needs of employees for production, the Corps has long insisted on building and improving the agricultural machinery industry-university-research and promotion system. The Beidou navigation automatic driving technology promoted and applied has realized the integrated development of mechanization and informatization in cotton production; the demonstration and promotion of domestic high-performance high-horsepower Tractors equipped with plows, domestic six-row baling cotton pickers and other high-end agricultural machinery and equipment provide strong technical and equipment support for the XPCC’s cotton production mechanization and informatizationintelligent development.” Talking about the XPCC The mechanization achievements of cotton cultivation are well known to Maping.

At the same time, the Corps also focuses on the simultaneous improvement of cotton planting agricultural machinery and agronomic levels.

“The higher the degree of agricultural mechanization, the higher the requirements for seeds.” Liu Cheng, general manager of Xinjiang Qianhai Seed Industry Co., Ltd., located in Tumushuk City, told reporters: “When the Corps first planted cotton, it used a In the dense planting model with multiple holes, the germination rate of cotton seeds is 60%, and one acre of land requires five or six kilograms of seeds. With the promotion of sophisticated sowing and machine-picked cotton, one seed per hole is adopted, and the demand for cotton seeds per acre has dropped to 1.5 About kilograms.” According to reports, the germination rate of national standard cotton seeds is 80%. They have increased the germination rate of cotton seeds to more than 92% by adding gravity selection, winnowing, magnetic selection and other seed selection links. Through the selection of high-quality cotton varieties and farmers’ field agronomic cultivation, they have kept the height of the cotton plant at 70 cm to 80 cm, and the first fruiting branch is located more than 20 cm from the ground, making it more suitable for mechanical cotton picking.

The development of cotton seeds reflects the changes in the mechanization of cotton planting in the Corps. After more than 20 years of introduction, testing, demonstration and promotion, the XPCC cotton planting has formed a series of standards, specifications and technical regulations in many key aspects such as cotton variety cultivation, agronomic cultivation measures, field production management, residual film pollution control, cleaning and processing, etc., and the results have been Significantly.

�”After the reform of the group farm, employees have more autonomy in agricultural production and their interests are more protected. Under market economy conditions, if you want to give full play to the advantages of cotton machinery planting, employees will benefit more from group development.” January 2018 , Zhou Run established Beiquan Town’s first agricultural and industrial professional cooperative independently established by employees. Currently, there are 523 households with more than 180 agricultural machinery and 54,700 acres of cultivated land.

Zhou Run told reporters that after employees voluntarily join the cooperative, the land is still contracted by the employees. The cooperative purchases agricultural materials through marketization, provides unified agricultural machinery services, and encourages everyone to standardize cotton planting. This year, compared with ordinary employees, members have saved more than 70 yuan per mu in agricultural supplies and machinery. In addition, after unifying cotton varieties, the quality of cotton has been improved, and their cotton price per kilogram is 0.2 yuan higher than the market price. Last year, they also established a ginning factory, forming an operating model of “enterprise + cooperative + farmers” and an integrated industrial chain of “production, processing, and sales” to benefit employees.

In order to help employees increase their income and become rich, the Corps has implemented a series of comprehensive supporting reforms in the regiment field. The development of workers as a team under the conditions of market economy has led to the rise of farmer cooperatives.

In the 18th Company of the 44th Regiment in Tumushuk City, the 3rd Division, in order to support the development of the company’s agricultural machinery cooperative, they invested more than 1.4 million yuan as a development fund to lend to employees with agricultural machinery driving skills and willingness to purchase agricultural machinery. Currently, they own 10 high-horsepower tractors, seeders, sprayers and other agricultural machinery and equipment, and are the first choice for local employees to purchase agricultural machinery services.

Agricultural machinery manufacturing companies also pay more attention to agricultural machinery technological transformation and after-sales service. “Nowadays, when manufacturing agricultural machinery, we need to pay more attention to the needs of farmers.” Ma Yong, a technician at Shihezi Xinchangsheng Agricultural Machinery Co., Ltd., told reporters that in 2018, farmers discovered during cotton planting that the seed rows were not covered with soil, which had the advantage of conducive to cotton emergence. . Based on feedback from farmers, they spent two years improving and producing a side-row soil-covering seeder. They have sold more than 3,000 units in total and have been approved for 12 technology patents. In 2020, this technology received a project subsidy of 600,000 yuan from the Corps. Every year during spring plowing, they send 70% of their employees to the fields to provide guidance and help farmers use machinery properly.

“Large-scale, intensive and efficient are the development trends of modern agriculture.” Tang Zhihui, director of the Mechanical Equipment Research Institute of the Xinjiang Academy of Agricultural Sciences, suggested that the industrial advantages brought by the development of cotton mechanization should be consolidated and improved, and the number of employees turning to professional farmers should be increased. The intensity of training is to adapt to the development of the cotton industry from mechanization to informatization and intelligence, while consolidating and improving the operating capabilities of the existing agricultural machinery mechanization system, guiding and supporting enterprises to accelerate their transformation to precision, informatization, and intelligence; and also guiding and supporting farmer cooperatives Standardize development, adhere to the concept of group development, accurately connect cotton processing enterprises, form a community of interests, and improve the market competitiveness of the XPCC cotton industry.

AAA

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