Mar 29, 2021|

JD Launches Digital Tea Farm in Sichuan

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by Yuchuan Wang

JD Farm, JD.com’s smart agriculture business, launched a digital tea farm project in Ya’an, Sichuan province on Mar. 27. The project leverages the company’s expertise e-commerce and logistics, together with advanced technologies including AI, big data and IoT.

Ya’an is believed to be the origin of artificial tea cultivation. The digital tea farm is a collaboration with leading tea company Sichuan Mengdinghuang Tea Industry Co., Ltd., which operates over a one-square-kilometer tea farm.

“We’ve implemented both IoT hardware and management software in Mengdinghuang Tea’s farm. The technology can monitor the water and soil quality, weather conditions and insect infestation, plus the transportation, packaging and other production information,” said Heyang Qi from JD Farm. “Through digital analysis, the system will guide scientific planting and production of tea.” For example, the analysis of insect infestation will give advice for farmworkers to accurately apply fertilizer and pesticides.

Insect infestation system

Insect infestation system

The digital system will encrypt the farming data with blockchain technology, which enables consumers to trace the tea back to its origin and understand growing conditions simply by scanning a QR code on the product’s packaging.

Traditional offline sales channels for tea have been impacted by COVID-19. Through the collaboration with JD, Mengdinghuang tea’s products will be sold through JD Farm’s online flagship store. According to JD’s data, the company has helped several Sichuan-based tea companies double their sales by going online.

“We hope to leverage the opportunity of building this digital tea farm to lead the new growth for the tea industry driven by technology,” said Jianyong Wei, chairman of Mengdinghuang Tea.

 

(yuchuan.wang@jd.com)

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