Beidou-guided precision seeders boost summer maize sowing efficiency in Mengjin, Henan

According to China Daily rural news desk, high temperatures blanketed Li Village in Huimeng Town, Mengjin District of Luoyang City on 12 June, where rows of straw-covered farmland stretched for more than a thousand mu. New pneumatic precision maize seeders fitted with autonomous driving systems shuttled steadily across the plots, carving six straight furrows of consistent depth in their wake.

The advanced agricultural machine is newly purchased by a registered family farm operating within the village. Built-in Beidou satellite navigation enables fully automatic seed and fertiliser feeding cycles, covering over thirty mu of farmland per working hour once set into operation.

This pneumatic seeder operates via precise negative pressure seed suction, placing one single seed into each planting cavity. More than ninety per cent of plant spacing meets official agricultural standards, with missed or double sowing instances kept below two per cent. Field calculations show manual thinning work is almost eliminated, cutting seed consumption by eight to ten per cent while lifting seedling survival rates from eighty per cent to over ninety-five per cent.

The region has entered the critical window of the three-summer farming campaign, covering summer wheat harvest, summer crop sowing and seedling management. Mengjin District authorities push forward demonstration deployment of smart farm machinery as part of local grain yield improvement schemes. Ten new Beidou-linked pneumatic precision seeders have been introduced across the district this year and allocated exclusively to ongoing summer sowing tasks.

Conventional seeding equipment previously required over two weeks to finish the same scale of fieldwork, often forcing round-the-clock operations to beat shifting weather timelines. Intelligent machinery now completes three hundred mu of farm preparation each day, finishing a 1,300-mu field plot within four working days and delivering output more than three times higher than older planting kits.

Centimetre-level positioning from the Beidou navigation module guarantees straight machine tracks and uniform row and plant spacing. Single-seed placement in every cavity removes repeated sowing, seed absence and overcrowded seedling clusters from the initial planting stage.

Farm operators gain far greater stability for autumn grain harvest planning with upgraded automated equipment. Unpredictable rainfall patterns previously created risks of slow, low-standard sowing with traditional machinery, while the fleet of smart seeders establishes solid foundations for robust autumn crop development this year.

Local agricultural authorities will roll out further batches of high-efficiency pneumatic and air-blast seeders next calendar year. Family farms and large-scale commercial growers will act as demonstration operators to steer district-wide maize cultivation towards standardised, intelligent and dense planting frameworks, reinforcing long-term domestic grain security foundations.