With the beginning of the cotton harvest season, northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region is anticipating higher yields from advancements in agricultural technology and mechanization.
Xinjiang is the largest production area of high-quality commodity cotton in China. The 2.47-million-hectare cotton growing area in the region has produced more than 5 million tons of cotton for six consecutive years.
The northern and southern parts of the vast autonomous region have different climates, different cotton varieties and also different growing periods. Currently, cotton picking started two weeks ago in northern Xinjiang, while the harvesting has just begun in the southern areas.
In Tumxuk City, located in southern Xinjiang, cotton farmers are using all-in-one harvesters to help them pick cotton, separate the flowers from the stalks and pack them into bundles.
"In the past, we picked the cotton manually. It took us more than a month to pick 100 mu (6.67 hectares) of cotton, and the cost reached 1,000 yuan per mu (about 2,106 U.S. dollars per hectare). Now, we use domestically produced cotton pickers to gather them, which have high efficiency and low cost. It now takes less than a day to harvest my 100 mu of cotton, with a cost less than 200 yuan per mu," said Turaxun Samat, a local farmer.
This year, Xinjiang has vigorously promoted the new cotton planting technology of drip irrigation under the mulching film at the appropriate emergence temperature, replacing the old method of irrigating before sowing. The technology can greatly improve the emergence rate while also saving water resources.
In addition, the precision sowing supported by BeiDou Navigation Satellite System and remote sensing monitoring by the agricultural big data platform have also been widely adopted across Xinjiang, contributing to the growth of cotton output.
"This year, a total of 1,057,800 mu (about 70,520 hectares) of cotton have been planted in Tumxuk City, and the unginned cotton yield is estimated at 451.4 kilograms per mu, an average increase of 11.7 kilograms per mu over the previous year," said Chen Yongsen, a member of the leadership of the city's Bureau of Agriculture and Rural Affairs.
The cotton harvesting in Xinjiang is expected to end in early November.
Xinjiang enters cotton harvest season with higher yield expected
An European media industry leader highlighted the transformative influence of artificial intelligence (AI) on the industry, stressing the importance of exchange and cooperation among global media outlets.
The 12th Global Video Media Forum (VMF) opened in Quanzhou City on Tuesday. The two-day event has brought together around 200 representatives from mainstream media and international organizations across more than 60 countries and regions to the historic coastal city under the theme "Intelligence Without Frontiers, Vision Beyond The Horizon - Media's Role in Communication and Cultural Exchange."
In a sidelines interview with China Global Television Network (CGTN), Adrian Wells, Managing Director of the European News Exchange, a global news provider, shared his insights on how embracing AI and fostering media cooperation can further improve the industry.
"In the professional broadcast and digital industry, we have enough intelligence to know that we have to embrace this technology. We have to take the best parts of it. We have to integrate it with what we already have, our experience, our professionalism, admission for our consumers. Actually, media is in a very challenging environment now. We do have a lot of threats to our traditional ways of going about things. We have to use these new technologies like AI in order to transform ourselves. And we really have to be at the forefront of embracing it, not resisting it," Wells said.
Wells also suggested that media organizations can improve by learning from their counterparts, adapting successful strategies, and incorporating solutions from different environments to enhance their own operations.
"How do we really go about finding those right choices? It's by looking at what everyone else is doing, taking the best of how different organizations are using new technologies, adapting their business models, trying to reach consumers in a different way. And really cherry-picking the best examples, the best use cases across the industry to try and reimagine what we're doing in our own environments, whether it's in China, in the United Kingdom, in the United States or in any European country. Look across the industry who is doing what, how are they solving some of these problems and use that as a kind of nice salad mixture to try and find the solutions in your own newsroom organization," he said.
In addition, Wells highlighted the forum's positive role in promoting global media exchange and collaboration.
"I think that if you ask anyone about cooperation and collaboration, everyone's for it, right? It's a no-brainer. Of course, we want to collaborate. We want to cooperate. But actually, when you come to collaborating and cooperating, it's actually a bit of a pain as well, because you got to devote time for reaching out, to be aware of what other industries are doing, what your colleagues are doing across the industry," Wells said.
So, I think the good thing about this forum is that we're in an environment now where we can mix, you've got a lot of different people from news organizations, from different parts of the world that have got different ideas. And I think we all learn a lot from hearing about different experiences across the world, and really trying to sort of create some of these ties. Otherwise, if we don't make that effort, they just won't be there," said the industry insider.
European media professional highlights AI power, global exchange in industry
