Why Is No One Harvesting Wheat in a Certain Place During the Grain in Ear Season?
Just after Grain in Ear, the whole country has entered the wheat harvest season. The domestication and cultivation of wheat has a history of 10,000 years, but the way of harvesting wheat has not changed for thousands of years. The progress of science and technology has completely changed this industry, and the intervention of methods such as AI is accelerating this process. Unmanned harvesters, satellite data and computer vision may completely liberate people from the fields.
After the Grain in Ear season, most areas have entered the busy farming season. Grain in Ear means that awned crops, such as barley and wheat, have matured and are officially ready for harvest.
However, the weather is prone to sudden changes during this season, and work such as harvesting wheat requires every second counts. As the saying goes, "In spring, you race against time; in summer, you race against time." Agricultural production has entered the "three busy summer" seasons of summer harvest, summer planting, and summer management. Harvesting wheat is also called "seizing food from the tiger's mouth."
Harvesting wheat with one's face to the loess and one's back to the sky is becoming a historical memory. With the development of science and technology, new methods are gradually changing this tradition.
Wheat: An important crop that affects human destiny
In Harari's "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind", there is such a statement in the discussion of the agricultural revolution:It was not humans who tamed wheat, but wheat that tamed humans.
The reason he gave was that growing wheat required a lot of energy, and in order to fill their stomachs, people could only take good care of it, loosen the soil, apply fertilizer, boil water, catch insects, and change from nomadic to settled.
The choices humans have made throughout history - wheat - have also affected their own evolution to a certain extent. For example, long-term working life has caused humans to suffer from some new diseases, such as lumbar disc herniation, but these do not affect our dependence on wheat.
As a staple food, wheat has greatly changed the structure of human society. Even today, wheat remains one of the three major grains, and the diverse pasta culture has made us increasingly dependent on wheat.
At the same time, the process of wheat cultivation has also become a part of people's struggle for survival.As the wheat harvest approaches, how to harvest and store the wheat that has been worked so hard for is almost a history of technological struggle.
For a long time, the way of harvesting wheat has not changed much. After the development and popularization of science and technology, the traditional working method gradually withdrew from the stage, and wheat harvesting ushered in the road of mechanized development.
Before the combine harvester, humans used human labor for thousands of years.
When it comes to wheat harvesting, a young and strong man plus a sickle, this simple labor combination, has served as the main way of harvesting wheat for a long time.
"My feet are steaming with the hot earth, my back is burning with the scorching sun. I feel no heat even when I am exhausted, but I regret that the summer is so long." From the scene in Liu Yuxi's poem "Watching the Wheat Harvest" to the "wheat pickers" active in the northwest region in the last century, countless working people relied only on sickles and shoulders, and exchanged countless sweat for grains of food.
Wheat pickers were active in the 1970s and 1980s. When the wheat was ripe, they walked from east to west, harvesting wheat for others according to the direction of wheat ripening. In the novel "White Deer Plain", one of the protagonists, Heiwa, was a wheat picker.
After a long period of manual harvesting, the power of science and technology slowly penetrated into agriculture and began to liberate human labor.
The first horse-drawn disc-cutter reaper appeared in 1799;
From 1831 to 1835, animal-powered wheat harvesters gradually became popular in the United States;
After 1920, with the widespread use of tractors, tractor-drawn combine harvesters began to come onto the scene.
Since then, the combine harvester has continued to develop, and as one of the greatest inventions in agriculture, it has gradually become a tool for large-scale use.However, compared with the history of wheat cultivation, the mechanized harvesting process is obviously far behind.
Now, the harvesting methods introduced by technologies such as artificial intelligence are bound to speed up the process.
When wheat harvest meets AI
With the development of smart agriculture based on AI, one possible trend is the gradual realization of unmanned farms.
Harper Adams University is exploring a no-till farming project, a collaboration between researchers at the university and industry to explore ways to farm without human supervision.In the 1.5-acre experimental field, crops are planted, cared for and harvested by robot farmers.
Through simple modifications to tractors and combine harvesters, the planting process is fully automated. Drones are even used as "scouts" to provide intelligent suggestions for the harvesting process.
The original intention of this project, in addition to solving the problem of labor shortage in the UK, also stems from a concept: they believe that agriculture is still stuck in the 20th century, focusing on scale. They also pursue large-scale spraying of pesticides; the harvesting process based on industry will result in a lot of waste.
In their project, the "robot farmer" successfully harvested about 4.5 tons of wheat accurately in a very short time, harvesting 200,000 pounds of crops at a very low cost.
“From a technical point of view, farms can still complete processes such as harvesting without humans doing the work themselves. And we have already achieved this,” said the relevant person in charge.
Introducing technologies such as unmanned driving and the Internet of Things into the harvesting process will gradually achieve a faster unmanned harvesting process, precision agriculture such as unmanned farms is also becoming a reality. The hard work of mankind in harvesting wheat may come to an end.
Large field of view in computer vision
In addition to the development of automated harvesting, AI also has "superpowers" in terms of harvesting deployment.Satellite imagery, computer vision, telematics, and cloud-based mobile applications, is the most powerful magic weapon.
After the wheat matures, the maturity data of crops in each plot will be displayed through satellite imaging. Combined with meteorological data and machine learning algorithms, the most appropriate harvesting plan can be obtained to facilitate harvesting and planting in the next season.
IBM has also made a similar attempt using Watson.Factors such as weather, predictive analytics, artificial intelligence, meteorological data and IoT sensors, providing farmers with relevant solutions for tillage, planting, spraying and harvesting, and realizing intelligent agricultural development.
The U.S. Department of Defense has also allocated $1.5 million to Descartes Labs to monitor and analyze wheat production in the Middle East and Africa to effectively avoid famine and political turmoil. Another company called TellusLabs also uses machine learning algorithms to predict the yield of multiple crops based on satellite images.
Whether wheat tamed humans or humans tamed wheat, with the advancement of technology, wheat harvesting has become easier and more efficient, saving manpower and hard work, and people no longer have to race against the weather and time. With just a few clicks, you may be able to harvest a year's harvest.
Perhaps it is AI that can completely save mankind from the hard work of harvesting wheat.