The Smart Agriculture Competition 2021 was launched today to facilitate agricultural modernization. The competition is led by the Chinese e-commerce company Pinduoduo, China Agricultural University and Zhejiang University and held under the technical guidance of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations and Wageningen University & Research.

The competition this year will apply nutrition science, precision farming and other interdisciplinary expertise to cultivate tomatoes. The winners will be judged on the yield and nutritional value of the tomatoes. Taking place over six months, the competition is open to all agronomists and computer scientists around the world and has a total prize pool of more than RMB one million.

Registration for the competition is now open and will end on 9 September, 2021. Teams can register through the competition website. A total of 15 teams will be selected by the judging panel to participate in the preliminary rounds, where they will present their ideas and proposals. The four teams with the highest scores will enter the final round.

“Agriculture is the foundation of the development of human society. The driving force for the improvement of the agricultural industry comes from the development and application of cutting-edge technologies,” said Andre Zhu, Senior Vice President at Pinduoduo. “As China’s largest online selling platform for agricultural products, we want to play our part to feed more people and feed them better in a sustainable way.”

The judging panel will be composed of leading experts and practitioners with diverse backgrounds including horticulture, crop modeling, algorithm design and policymaking. Teams will be judged not only on yield but also on the nutritional value and environmentally friendliness of their farming methods, which is in line with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

“The Smart Agriculture Competition plays a unique role in that it aims to foster innovation that is accessible to smallholder farmers who produce around 80% of China’s food,” said Tian Jianhui, Vice President of China Agricultural University. “It is an important platform for different stakeholders of agri-food ecosystem to come together to develop practical, cost-effective, and environmentally sustainable solutions for farmers.”

"China’s farming sector is undergoing tremendous change, making the leap from traditional agriculture to modern agriculture,” said He Yong, Dean of Biosystems Engineering and Food Science College of Zhejiang University. “The Smart Agriculture Competition encourages more forces to accelerate the agricultural development in China.”

"Technology is transforming agriculture and food production. It is extremely important to promote digital transformation of agriculture and improve food safety," said Carlos Watson, the FAO Representative to China. “FAO provided technical support to the Smart Agriculture Competition last year. We are looking forward to another successful collaboration to bring farmers real benefits through digitalization."

In last year’s inaugural competition, the four technology teams employed data analysis, intelligent sensors and greenhouse automation to grow strawberries, and its output weight was 196% higher than that of the traditional farmers’ team on average. Two of the technology teams have started to commercialize their technology after the competition, resulting in real-life gains in productivity for local farmers.