Rice planting technology looks a lot like printing

Just when you thought desktop printing had reached its zenith, a new kind of printing for farmers is making rice planting a lot easier.

Instead of spitting out ink onto paper, the new printing device spits out rice seeds and glues them to a paper backing 65 centimeters wide. The resulting sheets, straw pulp paper with seeds attached, are then laid out in a rice paddy, ready to sprout.

The technology, which was introduced in Chongqing's Yongchuan district last year, is helping farmers in Xinjian village in Wujian county improve their planting efficiency and boost yields.

The machine, introduced by Sinochem Agriculture Holdings in March last year, is 3 meters long, 1.1 meters wide, 1.1 meters high and weighs about 300 kilograms. Rice seeds are poured in from the top and fixed with rice paste to the paper on a conveyor belt coming out the machine, said Liang Jinlong, an agronomist at Sinochem.

He said farmers no longer need to do manual sowing but can simply lay down the evenly printed seed paper like a rug and cover it with plastic film. In normal conditions, the seeds sprout and grow, while the seed paper, which is made of straw pulp, decomposes in the field.

The seed germination rate is 97 percent, Liang said.

The machine, provided by the company, can "fast print" enough seeds every minute for 0.13 to 0.2 hectares of land, which is enough to meet the needs of the whole village. It costs the farmers 180 yuan ($28) per hectare.

"Compared with traditional manual sowing of rice seeds, the seed printing technology provides more precision - saving more than 30 percent of the seeds and reducing sowing costs of 450 yuan per hectare for the farmers," said Yang Xiwen, a village official.

She added that the technology provides more even distribution of seeds than can be achieved manually. It prevents overseeding or missed spots that are typical of manual sowing, and can increase the quality and yield of the rice as well.

"Manual seeding is very tiring — 1 mu (0.067 hectares) of land would cost a man more than a day to complete. But with the help of the machine, work becomes much easier and can be done within half a day," farmer Yu Shenyun, 70, said.

As of March last year, more than 20,000 mu in Yongchuan were planted using the new technology.

Randy Wright contributed to this story.