The golden autumn in September brings fruitful results. 780,000 acres of cotton in Manas County have entered the harvesting period one after another, with the mechanized harvest rate reaching 100%. Production efficiency and cotton quality have been greatly improved, agricultural efficiency has been increased, and farmers’ income has been significantly increased.
On September 23, in the 10,000-mu cotton field in Shawodao Village, Beiwucha Town, four new cotton harvesting and packaging machines were shuttling back and forth in the cotton field to harvest new cotton. This new type of cotton picker can efficiently and quickly detach cotton from the cotton stalk, push it to the storage compartment through airflow, and spit out a large “golden egg” weighing 2.5 tons from the tail every 30 minutes, with a picking rate of up to 95% More than %, a cotton picker can pick more than 700 acres of cotton every day on average, which is equivalent to the total labor of a thousand flower pickers. The picking speed and cotton quality are greatly improved.
Pan Tianyu, chairman of the Julianxin Cotton Planting Professional Cooperative, said: “This year our cooperative planted 23,000 acres of cotton. We chose the most advanced cotton picking and packaging machine. This machine facilitates our transportation and improves the net harvesting rate. It is extremely high, and the cotton production of 23,000 acres is expected to be completed in about 20 days.”
Manas County borders the Tianshan Mountains to the south and the Gurbantunggut Desert to the north. It has complete agricultural infrastructure, fertile soil, abundant light, heat and soil resources, and is suitable for growing cotton. It is a national-level high-quality commercial cotton production base with an annual output of 140,000 tons of lint. This year, Manas County has planted 780,000 acres of high-quality cotton through the industrialized management model of “enterprises + cooperatives + bases + farmers”, achieving industrialized cotton planting, intensive management, standardized production, mechanized operations, and informatization. Management, cotton yield and quality have been improved.
Pan Tianyu, chairman of the Julianxin Cotton Planting Professional Cooperative, said: “Our cooperative has now achieved unified varieties, unified planting, and unified harvesting. In this process, we have used the most advanced digital agriculture and water-saving drip irrigation to increase the yield. It has increased from more than 300 kilograms to more than 500 kilograms.”
In recent years, with the goal of building a high-yield, high-quality, and efficient cotton demonstration base, Beiwucha Town has vigorously improved agricultural infrastructure such as efficient water-saving facility pipe networks, forest belts, and field road maintenance, and steadily expanded the scale of the cotton base. Farmland standardization, scale, intensification, mechanization, intelligence, and integration of water and fertilizer have improved the scientific and technological content of cotton production, while enhancing the ability to resist risks and ensuring a bumper cotton harvest.
Liang Xiangyuan, deputy secretary of the Party Committee and mayor of Beiwucha Town, said: “At present, we have prepared more than 100 cotton picking machines to prepare for cotton harvesting. Our technical staff have also gone deep into the fields to prepare for cotton harvesting. Farmers will provide technical guidance and we will be able to harvest all cotton before the end of October.”</p
