E-commerce giant Pinduoduo targets Artificial intelligence as a tool to enhance food production and distribution in China.
According to reports from Pinduoduo Global, in 2019, there had been 136.4 billion yuan worth of agricultural product orders placed using their platform.
This shows sales of agricultural products doubling, which cemented their position as the leader in e-commerce. Additionally, a surge of 174% to 240 million was seen in the number of annual active buyers of agricultural produce.
Consequently, an increase of 142% to 586,000 was also seen in active merchants using the platform. Surprisingly, these figures do not account for the additional surge due to the usage of online channels to buy produce during the coronavirus outbreak.
Traditionally, consumers preferred to buy fresh food at wet markets or supermarkets. However, the convenience of e-commerce boomed in recent years because it offers a broader range of products.
Smart Agriculture
According to CNBC, the Duo Duo Farm initiative was launched by the e-commerce company to work with farmers directly
According to Pinduoduo, they came up with the initiative to help farmers become more profitable and sell directly to consumers. Senior Vice President of Strategy and Legal of Pinduoduo, Andre Zhu, said they are providing the farmers a tool to reap the benefits of technology.
He adds that they foresee the working population of the Chinese agriculture industry on a decline. This is why they are pushing for smart agriculture with less human involvement as a way of going forward. Additionally, they are investing in technology to detect contaminants in food and develop an analytics system for agriculture.
Artificial Intelligence vs. Human Farming Competition
This year the China Agricultural University and PInduoduo organized the Smart Agriculture Competition that kicked off in Yunnan. The competition comprises master growers and AI experts who will head to head to determine who can develop the best solutions for agricultural productivity enhancements.
One of the participants was Ji Rongxi, an expert in traditional strawberry farming. Together with his team, they are tagged as the "Traditional Team," and they came in armed with years of strawberry-cultivation experience. On the other hand, their fierce competitions were armed with laptops and artificial intelligence algorithms.
The "Science and Technology Teams," as they are called, were top scientific and AI experts that will take on the same task of growing strawberries using science and technology.
This is reported to be the first cross-disciplinary smart agriculture competition in China. Besides, the technical guidance was under the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations.
During the competition, the Traditional Teams will solely utilize their agricultural management skills and years of planting experience to compete with the AI technology designed by their rivals. Meanwhile, the Science and Technology Teams were instructed to grow strawberries remotely in digital and unmanned greenhouses.
These AI experts were required to develop AI solutions using IoT devices, cameras, and sensors. These devices were designed to gather growth data and greenhouse conditions. Their goal is to achieve high-quality unmanned strawberry production efficiently.
The winners will be determined by the economic value created and the reliability, scalability, and technical merit of the agritech solutions implemented.
Duo Duo Farm will provide research funding and implementation support, while PDD will give academic and commercial support to the winners.
