In the Hetao Plain in late autumn, corn tassels rustle in the wind. At the edge of a field in Guangming Village, Langshan Town, Linhe District, Li Xinmin, now in his seventies, straightened up and rubbed his lower back. "Most people farming in our village are elderly. Few could keep going if we still relied on manpower and animal power the way we did in the past," the old man said. Before he finished speaking, the sound of farm machinery grew closer from beyond the village 鈥?a deep-plowing machine equipped with BeiDou navigation moved forward at a steady pace, turning over neat furrows with no corners missed. Farther away, a tall corn drying tower had already begun operating, and the roar of machinery was taking over the heavy field work once shouldered by the older generation of farmers.
Old farmers guard the good land, carrying farming's simplest concerns
In Lianrong Village, Xinhua Town, Linhe District, the arable land totals about 18,000 mu, yet the permanent population is only 545. A large expanse of land with few people and an aging farming workforce was once the most striking label on this land. Villagers said that in earlier years most young people went out to work, and those willing to stay and cultivate the fields could be counted on one's fingers. The figures from Lianfeng Village, Bayi Township, are even more telling: 5,200 mu of land in the village has been transferred, and households that are "unable to cultivate because of old age" account for about 11% of all households and 40% of the population over 60. A village cadre admitted that the main force working the land now consists of people born in the 1960s and 1970s, and in another five or ten years, these farmers who have toiled for half a lifetime will be even older and will find it hard to bear high-intensity field work. Nationwide, surveys show that 54.7% of the farming population is over 51. The challenge of sustaining the farming workforce is a reality the Hetao irrigation district must confront. Yet the older generation's love for the land has never faded. They keep to the ridges, hoping this fertile soil will yield abundantly year after year, and hoping the flame of farming will be passed on steadily. That concern became the starting point for Hetao's efforts to advance agricultural social services, develop smart agriculture, and cultivate new farmers.
"Land nannies" bring door-to-door service and ease farmers' worries through托管
Machinery went first, lifting the burden from older farmers. In Xinhua Town, Linhe District, the socialized托管 service model of "you go out to earn money, I farm for you" has continued to expand. Farmers entrust their farmland to professional service organizations, and the entire process from plowing, planting, management, and harvesting is handled by the team. They can then work elsewhere or develop livestock breeding with peace of mind, preserving land income while broadening income channels. A detailed account reveals the income gains from socialized organizations serving agriculture. "Calculating from the four aspects of plowing, planting, protection, and harvesting, each mu of land can save farmers between 70 and 100 yuan. For example, for plowing, the market price is 45-50 yuan per mu, while our socialized organization's price is about 35 yuan per mu, which immediately saves 15 yuan. Especially at harvest, we collect wheat straw for free and also return 40-50 yuan per mu to farmers. After this calculation, farmers spend less and have more income sources," said Liu Xin, head of the Chenxing Agriculture and Animal Husbandry Machinery Cooperative in Bayannur City. More and more intelligent equipment is entering Hetao farmland. BeiDou navigation seeding accuracy has reached the centimeter level, with consistent sowing depth and uniform seed placement, effectively improving seedling emergence on saline-alkali land. Across the district, 1.07 million mu have been sown with BeiDou navigation, and 67 agricultural machinery social service organizations, along with more than a thousand high-horsepower tractors and plant protection machines, provide full-chain托管 services to 23,000 small farmers each year.
"Small fields merged into large fields" reshapes the land pattern and paves a smart farming path
Advanced machinery alone is not enough. Scattered and fragmented plots restrict large machinery from being fully used. Since 2016, Lianrong Village has relied on high-standard farmland construction to promote the merging of small fields into large ones, along with integrated water and fertilizer drip irrigation facilities, with drip irrigation area exceeding 14,000 mu. Once the plots were consolidated, agricultural machinery could enter the fields smoothly, and willingness to transfer land continued to rise. Since 2023, Linhe District has secured a total of 1.246 billion yuan in higher-level high-standard farmland project funds and has built 535,000 mu of high-standard farmland, including 180,000 mu built in 2023, 120,900 mu in 2024, and 234,100 mu in 2025. Fragmented small fields connected into large-scale fields have shifted Hetao agriculture from "farmers fighting alone" to intensive management, laying a solid land foundation for the implementation of smart agriculture.
Youth returns to the fields as new farmers take over the granary
On the ridges, young faces keep appearing, injecting fresh vitality into the ancient farming of Hetao. Nineteen post-90s new farmers in Linhe District joined together to establish the Chenxing Agriculture and Animal Husbandry Cooperative, with socialized services covering all links of plowing, planting, protection, and harvesting, driving nearby farmers to farm scientifically together. Large-scale grower Yang Zhiquan transferred 5,000 mu of land and arranged waxy corn, feed corn, sunflowers, wheat, and tomatoes in a staggered layout to optimize the planting structure and spread market risks. Post-85 new farmer Zhao Kui cultivates 200 mu of intercropping land, using a wheat-corn intercropping model to achieve two harvests from one mu and increase overall returns by more than 5%. What they bring is not only labor, but also modern management thinking. In the cooperative, fully automatic seeders, remote-controlled plant protection drones, corn drying towers, and color sorters are fully equipped; a single mobile phone can patrol the fields, providing real-time warnings of where moisture is lacking or where pests and diseases occur. Xihai Village in Bainiaobao Town is exploring post-wheat replanting of silage corn, with the highest yield reaching 4.4 tons per mu and an income increase of 430 yuan per mu. New farmers no longer focus only on a single season's grain output when doing their accounts; they calculate carefully and activate multiple harvests of income from the land in one year.
Technological support moves from "knowing how to farm" to "farming with wisdom"
The deep penetration of technology is reshaping the production methods of Hetao agriculture. In the ten-thousand-mu smart irrigation demonstration area of Xuhai Village, Chengguan Town, water distribution, fertilizer distribution, and pesticide application are completed with one click in the control room. Soil moisture sensors and intelligent weather stations are rooted in the fields, sensing moisture changes in real time, and farming is moving away from relying purely on experience toward data-based decision-making. Linhe District has laid out 17 modern agricultural science and technology demonstration parks and continues to expand smart agriculture application scenarios: intelligent moisture monitoring, soil testing and formula intelligent fertilizer blending, pest monitoring lamps, and 5G remote control systems work together. The district's integrated water and fertilizer area has reached 350,000 mu, saving about 20% of water and about 10% of fertilizer compared with traditional flood irrigation. Green prevention and control area totals 1.3 million mu, using drones, Beauveria bassiana, traps, and other technologies for green pest control. At the same time, Linhe continues to deepen industry-university-research cooperation, joining with China Agricultural University to build a smart agriculture big data platform and tackle fully unmanned operations. It has introduced precision regulation technology for dense corn planting, landing more than 100,000 mu across 11 townships and farms. The district has built 20 modern agricultural science and technology demonstration parks, 7 doctoral research workstations, and 4 science and technology small institutes, flexibly bringing in experts to take root in Hetao and move laboratories to the fields. The intelligent transformation is not limited to farmland. In large-scale breeding farms, intelligent feeding robots mix feed precisely according to formulas. This year, the local project "Data Collection Inside Ruminants and Full-Industry-Chain Data Services Based on AI Rumen Capsules" won a national first prize. A tiny AI capsule implanted in the rumen of cattle and sheep collects live physiological data in real time, supporting scientific breeding and precise judgment of grass-livestock balance. On one side are sensors in the fields, and on the other are intelligent sensing terminals inside livestock. Both planting and breeding are moving in the same direction, using data elements to activate Hetao's distinctive agriculture and animal husbandry. The fertile soil of Hetao continues to find new voices, and the granary on the frontier has successors. From the watchful care of white-haired old farmers to the roar of intelligent machinery and then to the rush of young new farmers, in the fields of the Yellow River's "Jizi Bend," the torch of farming is passed down from generation to generation, and the story of the Hetao granary is steadily being written toward a smarter, greener, and more prosperous direction.
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