Alibaba launches AI-backed agricultural tool to boost income for China’s farmers
Raising the income of China’s farmers and well-being in rural communities remains a priority for the government
China’s largest e-commerce operator Alibaba on Thursday launched its ‘ET Agricultural Brain’ in Shanghai, a digital tool aimed at boosting agricultural efficiency, crop yields and income for China’s farmers by enabling them to make better use of big data.
The ET Agricultural Brain, backed by Alibaba’s cloud computing arm Alibaba Cloud, wants to transform China’s farming industry via its artificial intelligence-backed technology, which can digitally record production details to help regulate the full life-cycle of production, boosting quality and capacity, said Simon Hu, president of Alibaba Cloud.
“The introduction of cloud-based agricultural intelligence is aimed at helping Chinese farmers to increase their crop yields, by for example, helping them to potentially achieve income of US$1,000 for rice per acre of land,” Hu said during the company’s Computing Conference in Shanghai on Thursday.
Although the world’s most-populous country has seen its agricultural productivity grow rapidly following the implementation of a series of economic reforms, overall output and productivity continues to lag other developed economies.
Boosting income for rural residents remains a priority in China, as half of the population live in these areas.
China’s Ministry of Agriculture has estimated that the average annual income of each farmer will surpass 13,000 yuan or about US$2,000 in 2017, representing a 50 per cent increase from five years ago.