China\’s maize-soybean strip intercropping technology has attracted a lot of interest after the latest media story that two Pakistani students from the Sichuan Agricultural University are utilizing and popularizing this innovation in their communities.
Such technology is widely available in Pakistan. It will raise maize yield as well as build additional soya bean harvests to minimize Pakistan\’s imports of soybean and increase the country\’s food security said Yang Wenyu, a professor at Sichuan Agricultural University, who is improving this technology and providing generous help to both students, financially and technically. It was he who first proposed the idea of employing this technology to bridge the gap between demand and supply of Soybean in Pakistan.
The use of maize-soybean strip intercropping technologies in Pakistan is theoretical and realistic. Second, Pakistan has a huge population while the arable land area is small. This has a need for inter-cropping to produce two crops together. Second, Pakistan enjoys ample sunlight, which is a favorable natural condition for soybean’s growth. Moreover, in the inter-cropping fields, maize can shade soybean to reduce high average temperature’s impact, and nitrogen fixation by soybean can promote maize’s growth in return. The crops in this model are like close partners that cooperate with each other to create bumper harvests. Maize is currently cultivated on an area of about 1.3 million hectares in Pakistan. If Professor Yang Wenyu’s method is adopted, the maize yield of Pakistan can be greatly increased.
Besides Pakistan, it also has been introduced to Africa and Europe such as Ghana and Sweden. Yang Wenyu’s team is working with Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences to promote the technology in European countries.
Modern farming and agricultural operations work far differently than those a few decades ago, primarily because of advancements in technology, including sensors, devices, machines, and information technology. Today’s agriculture routinely uses sophisticated technologies such as robots, temperature and moisture sensors, aerial images, and GPS technology around the world.
These advanced agriculture practices and research based insights allow businesses to be more profitable, efficient, safer, and more environmentally friendly. It is about high time that Pakistan also makes a conscious effort to introduce new-age practices like these in order too slowly mechanize the agricultural sector, making it more competitive internationally.
Mishaal Mariam Moeen, an author and mixed media artist, expresses her creativity through written words and visual art forms.
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