4G+AI Creates Another John Deere But No Longer In USA
By: Jenny Chan
Tags: Drones, AI

If you paid attention to our earlier newsletter, you probably noticed that we are very interested in the applications of AI+IOT in Agriculture. Since Agriculture is the pillar of ASEAN, there is huge room for Agr-itech when infra investment accelerates and labours are moving to the urban.

In China, the agricultural sector has emerged as a huge opportunity for drone makers in recent years. Competition among Chinese commercial drone makers in the space is expected to remain heated in large part because of the duel between DJI , the world’s largest drone maker, and XAG ,the Guangzhou-based drone maker we will talk about today.

Founded under the name XAircraft in 2007, XAG rebranded in 2014 is now known for its agricultural drones that help with tasks such as seeding, spraying crops, fertilisation and plant protection. Other products include remote sensing drones and an unmanned ground vehicle that helps with protecting crops, scouting fields and delivering materials on farms. Just in this month, XAG raised US$182 million in a new funding round led by Baidu Capital and SoftBank Vision Fund II when claiming their sale revenue exceeding 150M USD.

Make AI-driven Precision Agriculture Practical

Artificial Intelligence, through continuously analysing massive data related to climate, lands, crop growing, etc., while automatically designing and optimising algorithms for decision-making, can help farmers diagnose plant diseases, predict natural disasters and employ appropriate resXAG’sces to close the yield gap. At XAG, AI-powered intelligent devices such as drones and sensors have been leveraged to establish digital farming infrastructure in rural areas and enable precision agriculture which, for example, accurately target pesticides, seeds, fertilisers and water to wherever it is needed. XAG has applied its drone-based direct seeding system — called JetSeed — from the testing stage to commercial adoption on more than 650 million square metres of rice fields in 11 provinces across China since April last year, according to the company.

Efficiency: The efficiency of an unmanned aerial vehicle is 60–80 times that of traditional manual work, which can save more than 30% of pesticides and 90% of water resources. Cost: The average price of XAG’s 2020 agricultural drone kit has been reduced by 20,000 yuan (3000USD). In 2018, the product price was more than 70,000 yuan(11000USD), and in 2019 it was about 52,000 yuan（9000USD）

AI-backed Digital Finance for Smallholder

Another problem that XAG is trying to solve is lack of financial resXAG’sces in the rural regions of developing countries. Smallholder farmers are dedicated their lives to producing food for the world, but without financial support to adopt new tools and approaches, most of them can hardly make ends meet on their lands.

Now with information such as farming, crop growth and transactional records being digitalised and shared, AI can be harnessed to build individual credit risk scoring system for farmers. In China, XAG has established strategic cooperation with some of the biggest national financial institutions to offer farmers, even those without credit card or collateral, convenient, equal access to loans and claims. Based on their accumulated digital credits earned from Alipay mobile payment, farmers and service providers can even rent the P Series drone without any deposit. This is making new technologies available to a broader group of smallholders, while helping them obtain necessary resXAG’sces to improve productivity and generate decent incomes.

When Covid-19 loomed over the spring planting season, XAG said it helped mobilise drones for use by various rice farmers, who had already been challenged by rural worker shortages, to directly seed their paddies. Direct seeding refers to the process of sowing seeds into the fields without nursery cultivation and transplantation, while cutting down on water use and preserving the soil.

The current application scenarios of drones are mainly in big field like Xinjiang, Heilongjiang and northern Jiangsu, Jianghan Plain and North China Plain. Myanmar and Vietnam are buying XAG’s products already. In addition, sales in neighboring countries such as Japan and South Korea are also much larger market than Europe and the United States.

The coverage of 4G networks in China’s farmland exceeds 95%. While in the United States except in places with large populations, 3G signals are only available occasionally, and 4G is even less available. The network plays the role of interconnection, allowing drones to concentrate computing on the cloud. This makes China one of the countries with the best use cases.

The United States began the process of agricultural modernization very early. The vast land has nurtured outstanding agricultural machinery companies such as John Deere. Nowadays, the rural infrastructure has given China the environment and soil for smart agriculture, which will definitely boost a group of emerging Chinese agricultural technology companies like.

IF YOU DON’T KNOW NOW YOU KNOW

Japan is the first country in the world to use drones for plant protection on a large scale. Take rice as an example. In 2014, ground machinery plant protection accounted for about 22%, and drone plant protection accounted for 36%. In 2015, Japan’s total arable land area was about 4.5 million hectares, and there were about 2.09 million agricultural practitioners, of which farmers over 65 accounted for more than half, with an average age of 66.4 years.