Tech-driven sugarcane farming boosts yields, cuts costs in Guangxi

(ECNS) -- At the "Sweet Light" modern sugarcane industrial park in Quli Town, Fusui County, in Chongzuo, south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, sugarcane varieties including Guitang 44, Yunzhe 081609, Guitang 76, Zhongtang 3, and Zhongfu 1 are thriving, with most stalks standing more than three meters tall.

The park rotates several varieties and plants them in separate zones to keep yields stable and the fields ecologically resilient.

Yang Xue, who has worked in the sugarcane industry for eight years and now runs an agritech company, has watched the shift from farming by experience to farming by data. Virus-free seedlings and the cultivation methods that go with them can extend ratoon cropping from three years to about five, he said, with germination rates reaching 95%. "In Chongzuo, per-hectare sugarcane yield used to be around 60 metric tonnes. With new varieties, improved cultivation methods, and planting models, yields have now risen to 72 metric tonnes," he said.

To manage the park's 333 hectares of contiguous fields, Yang's team has installed a smart irrigation system that combines water, fertilizer, and pesticide application. It can be run from a computer or a mobile app, with irrigation timing, flow, and volume set precisely. One worker can now cover more than 67 hectares.

The system has since been upgraded to a dual-pipe design, Yang said, allowing water, fertilizer, and pesticides to be applied together and accurately. Annual electricity costs have fallen from 1,200 yuan (about $168) per hectare to 750 yuan (about $105). Four workers can now fertilize 40 hectares in a day, work that previously took 30 workers to cover less than seven hectares.

Mechanized harvesting has cut costs as well. Cutting and loading by hand costs more than 16,500 yuan per hectare, based on a yield of 105 metric tons per hectare and a rate of 160 yuan per metric ton. With machine harvesting, farmers receive a state subsidy of about 3,000 yuan per hectare and pay only 750 to 1,200 yuan for the service. The park also returns chopped stalks to the fields, saving another 450 to 600 yuan per hectare in fertilizer.

The Chinese Academy of Tropical Agricultural Sciences (CATAS) has been working with the Guangxi Academy of Agricultural Sciences and other institutions on variety improvement, seedling propagation, pest control, green cultivation, and mechanical harvesting.

Wu Qibin, a researcher at the Sugarcane Research Center of CATAS's Institute of Tropical Bioscience and Biotechnology, said Guangxi is China's core sugarcane-producing region, with more than 800,000 hectares under cultivation and over 60% of national sugar output. The industry is now pursuing two main goals, he said: breeding high-quality varieties suited to machine harvesting, and developing specialized machinery matched to those varieties.

(By Tang Yuxian)