Online farming mushrooms in Guanshanhu district

Zhuchang town, located in the Guanshanhu district of Guiyang – capital city of Southwest China's Guizhou province – has launched an online service to enable amateur enthusiasts to interact and participate in commercial farming, through a WeChat mini app.

Via the app, members of the public can nominate parcels of farmland they are interested in, and for a fee the farming company can plant fruit or vegetables for them. Through the app people can also follow real-time data on the growth of crops, ground temperature, soil moisture, wind speed and rainfall.

The app, which was released in 2019, now has more than 100,000 clients. Last year also saw the number of its online transactions hit 2 million orders, worth 3 million yuan ($462,000).

The service was launched by Guizhou Chenke Siyuan Agricultural Technology Co. Last year, the company had a record 10,000-plus visitors participating in online agricultural training.

Liu Rui, chief executive officer of the company, said it would continue to make the deep integration of big data and agriculture a top priority.

This would in turn foster better services for agricultural products and other innovative things, like parent-child farming experience courses, ecological tourism travel routes designed for senior citizens and synchronous data sharing.

In recent years, Guanshanhu has pursued the integration of big data and agriculture to boost its rural vitalization.

Moving forwards, the district plans to develop smart agriculture and broaden out the use of the internet of things, artificial intelligence and blockchain in the fields of agricultural planting, breeding, processing, logistics and marketing.