Aerial photo taken on April 5, 2021 shows farmers working in a field in Guangpo Town, Lingshui Li Autonomous County, south China's Hainan Province. As the temperature gradually rises around the time of Qingming Festival, farming activities are in full swing across the country, from the north to the south.(Photo: Xinhua)

Syngenta Group, the agriculture giant owned by Sinochem Holdings said on Wednesday that its business of Modern Agriculture Platform (MAP) has grown into a modern agricultural service platform with the largest service scale and the fastest growing service network in China.

The online service area exceeds 148 million mu (9.87 million hectares), accounting for about seven percent of the national arable land area, Syngenta Group CEO Erik Fyrwald said at a summit co-organized by Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS) on Wednesday. 

He said the digital agriculture system independently built by MAP provides different types of farmers with a digital agriculture service platform that integrates a number of applications. Farmers can access services including accurate weather forecasts, satellite remote sensing monitoring of field crop growth, and land plot visualization management.

The summit launched co-activities, as the two parties will jointly support a number of key projects and joint research to gather and integrate cutting-edge science and practical innovations in digital villages and smart agriculture sectors at home and abroad.

China is under pressure from resource and environmental constraints as land and water are limited in supply, and information asymmetry remains an industry bottleneck, including the recent sharp decline in pork prices, Sun Tan, deputy head of CAAS said at the meeting.

Data from National Bureau of Statistics showed that last year, China produced 669.49 million tons of grain, up 5.65 million tons, or 0.9 percent compared with 2019. Wheat output also increased by 0.5 percent, soybean production edged up 8.3 percent, rice output grew by 1.1 percent.

China's Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs in February unveiled guidelines on the country's rural work for 2021, stressing efforts to push rural vitalization and accelerate the modernization of agriculture and rural areas.

The guidelines outlined specific tasks to be achieved this year, covering areas including ensuring agricultural supply and enhancing the sector's use of technology.

Syngenta Group ranks the first in global plant protection industry and the third in the seed industry in 2020. In July, it applied for an IPO in the STAR Market in Shanghai where it aims to raise 65 billion yuan ($10 billion). This would be the largest IPO in China's A-share markets since that of Agricultural Bank of China in 2010.