Photo: Xinhua
Source: 21tech
Author: Luo Yiqi
Editor: Li Qingyu
Farming, the standard "watch the sky eat" industry. In the face of unpredictable weather and increasingly sparse working crowds, digitalization is an indispensable path.
"The need for digitalization in the plantation industry is fateful and must be done." Chu Yibin, general manager of Yunnan Chu's Agricultural Co., Ltd., told reporters such as 21st Century Business Herald, but behind this is extremely difficult, the southwest region where it is located, the land conditions are different, there is no commonality; coupled with the low rate of industrial returns, he estimates that perhaps in the next 20-30 years, it may be difficult for labor to work in the fields. "So we set the goal that robots must do the work on a digital basis."
This is also the trace left by Chu's agriculture when it started. In the impression of Lin Facheng, assistant president of Kingdee China, Chu already had a basic concept of digitalization at an early age.
"When Mr. Chu was still alive, we found that everywhere he went, he would take a small book to record the situation of each tree." Lin Facheng pointed out that this is actually the predecessor of digitalization, although there was no very precise digital requirements at that time, but the founder Chu Shijian often knows more about the data performance of these specific fruit trees than many people working in the field, "the average person can't stand his questions, everyone will be very surprised."
Now passed down to the next generation, Chu Yibin believes that after 2019, Chu's agriculture will also be upgraded from "one person's orange (cheng)" to "a group of people's (orange)". In other words, it is hoped that in the process of gradual digitization in these years, the corresponding methodologies will be gradually precipitated, and then condensed into a set of digital management models, hoping to further promote it to the universal planting industry with a low degree of digitalization.
Of course, this is bound to be a process that takes a long time to accumulate. "From the immediate point of view, we must seriously summarize, learn, and start from scratch and do it slowly. I believe that the results will be achieved. Whether we can achieve a digital platform for the whole industry chain of the planting industry, we have been discussing and pondering with all aspects, and we have not yet started. We have enough awe and enough determination to get started. Chu Yibin said so, because he knew that this start would be difficult, so he should be very careful not to drag himself down because the steps were too big.
Iterate step by step
Overall, the digitalization of the plantation industry is late because the industry itself is very complex and highly uncontrollable.
"There are many variables in the plantation industry, including heaven, earth, people, plants. When there are too many parameter values, there is too much interference, resulting in a pattern that will not be fixed. Chu Yibin introduced, "If you look at the complete chain from the planting end, to the product production end, to the industrialization standard, to the customer service demand." The weakest degree of digitalization in the market now is the agricultural planting industry, and in other industries such as aquaculture, we have seen many large-scale enterprises migrating online. The reason is that the planting industry, especially the cash crop industry, lacks standards, and digitalization is an important tool to help standardize. ”
According to 2019 as a key node, chu agriculture was more of a process of improving digital capabilities, and after that, it began to gradually cover the control of the entire production to sales process with digital capabilities.
Chu Yibin introduced that from 2009 to 2019, the company's digitalization mainly stayed in the stage of filling out forms with manual hands and accumulating digital fragments, and it is precisely because it is only fragments that the use of these digitizations is less efficient.
"Since 2019, we have basically entered the primary stage by accessing Kingdee's human resources and financial resource system, which has brought us an indexed management efficiency improvement in the process of output changes." He continued.
But the precipitation of a company's digital capabilities can actually go further. This is called the "long-term worker" model by Chu agriculture.
"It is very unreasonable to grab the stock in the market and is not very responsible for society, but we must jointly create increments and share increments, which should be a model of common wealth and sharing." Chu Yibin said that three years ago, Chu stopped the mode of increasing land holding, but began to try to export the precipitated ability to the land and farmers management model, that is, to do "long work" to farmers.
"In the process of production, we have summarized an industrial management law on a small area of land, combined with the brand height and resource integration ability, formed a digital standard, and used the rules to serve others." He further noted.
Lin Facheng further introduced, specifically, that farmers own leased land, the former in accordance with Chu's operating standards to help manage, unified to Chu's warehouse to receive including fertilizers, pesticides, and involve a series of management resource sharing.
"Now, Kingdee is building a big data-related platform for Chu's Agriculture. The two-year model may be a little rougher because the data is a long-term learning process that needs to be guaranteed to be closer to the actual performance. He continued that in the actual scene, the monitoring equipment of the field will be used to monitor water fertilizer and trace elements, and the data will be collected and analyzed to ensure the control quality of planting and the detection of leaves.
Its goal is to form a mature system to export outward. "The problem to be solved in the future is to deal with the impact of weather changes such as rainfall on crop growth. For example, rainy days have a great impact on oranges, which will lead to problems such as insufficient sweetness and fruit fall, and once the fruit falls, the fruit cannot be sold. There is a good data platform that can help us prepare for the corresponding digitization of weather information. Lin Facheng believes that "this will have a great impact on China's planting industry, because the theoretical model of different types of fruits is similar." ”
Precipitation model
"In the future, digitalization is to solve the problem of how to produce in the case of rising labor costs or labor shortage, which is no longer an auxiliary, but a major motivation." Chu Yibin concluded.
The current model is divided into industrial sectors to a certain extent. "I'm not very professional about digitalization personally, but I know that management has to make demands on numbers." He analyzed to the 21st Century Business Herald reporter that the entire industrial chain can be divided into three segments: product production end - supply chain end - client.
"At this stage of the information system, there are two purposes, one is to raise the standard for the product, but this standard is stopped in the part of the supply chain; the other is the back end, when the customer proposes the product standard, go to the front end, and implement according to this standard." For example, Chu Yibin said that the real product standard is to form an accurate digital standard through industrialization, and to put forward requirements for the production end of the product, that is, the planting end, through the industrial standard. It's a digital linking, backwards process.
For example, in 2019, Chu's Agriculture began to establish subdivision standards for products from industrial equipment, with a bottom line of 11.5 points for the proportion of sugar. "For the sugar ratio, in the past, only handheld instruments were used as sampling, which was not accurate enough, and in 2019, we used a set of industrialized equipment with a daily processing capacity of about 1200 tons to implement the standard." He introduced.
Also because of these product standards, it is possible to further set assessment standards for farmers at the planting end, and their remuneration will be linked to yield and quality standards, and the annual return will be locked with relevant indicators. "It's hard to talk too much about complex management concepts with farmer brothers, but it's fair to interpret the indicators through machines." Giving him the indicators clearly should be said to be the greatest help. ”
The data shows that according to the performance of mu yield, Chu orange has almost achieved the forefront level of the industry, reaching nearly 4 times the average yield of the domestic citrus industry per mu, and ensuring higher quality. For farmers, this brings great benefits and room for income improvement.
At the same time, to ensure product quality, it is also closely related to supply chain logistics. Chu Yibin said that with the help of the "warehouse management system" associated with the Kingdee system, from fruit picking, to industrial processing, to warehousing, the whole process can be mastered. Follow-up at the end of the sales channel, but also to correlate the data in and out of the warehouse, in order to ensure that in the limited number of days, the product is delivered to the hands of consumers, with digital accumulation, in order to be able to track the whole industry chain.
In the process of capacity precipitation, Chu Yibin maintained the attitude of "the planting industry can not be urgent, it must be taken slowly", and at the same time began to have short- and medium-term development expectations for the further application of these digital assets as appropriate.
"For example, the understanding of customer preferences, part of which is through the online direct store association, through customer feedback hope to really bring some structural impact." In the future, in the process of industrial development, it is not just a product, but can be expanded horizontally, and our understanding of customer demands may have more space. Figuratively speaking, in fact, the industry that does other categories takes the consumer as the center, 'fixes the production by sales', forms a management model and a digital model in a specific scenario, and further generates positive value through correction on other products, which is a relatively simple digital assetization. He said.
But after all, as a traditional industry, Lin Facheng told the 21st Century Business Herald that in the process of popularization, it will also face two major problems of experience and talent.
Limited by the attributes of the industry, how to cultivate talents with both digital and agrochemical capabilities in the planting industry enterprises is still a challenge.
At the same time, "farmers have no concept of digitalization, which is the biggest difficulty for us." He added that the Kingdee team needed to teach the planters to use mobile phones to carry out related operations. Historically, these groups of people have relied on master experience, and digitally presented answers tend to reveal answers that are different from experience. "These differences will lead to differences in details or essence, the most important thing is to change the farmer's psychological perception of digitalization, and ultimately help to realize the whole process of agricultural planting."
Editor: Lu Taoran