Key words of the passage: digital; farmer; agricultural

For the first time, Shao Qinglang, 33-year-old farmer from Miaoji Township, east China's Anhui Province, harvested over 550 kilograms of wheat per mu (666.7 square meters) in his 200-mu (13.33 hectares) farmland this summer, some 100 kg per mu more than last year, after having plowed the field for over nine years now.

What helped Shao attain the bumper harvest is an agricultural project he recently signed up for: Modern Agriculture Platform (MAP). Launched by Sinochem in 2017 and now part of agrochemical giant Syngenta Group, the digital platform offers a wide range of services to growers who want to increase their crop yields and quality.

Farmers who join MAP receive visits from agronomists who advise them what to plant, teach them how to grow their crops scientifically and provide them access to consumers, making life much easier for them and helping them increase income. With MAP's free crop monitoring app, farmers can also keep an eye on their fields.

"It's a perfect deal," Shao told CGTN. "Even with all these additional services, I end up saving my costs rather than spending more."

Many farmers like Shao are reaping the rewards of a burgeoning agricultural model that's transforming China's crop farming industry. In April, MAP services had reached 529 counties across 28 provinces, and nearly 400 MAP centers had been built to provide services for over 11.6 million mu of land.

Partly driven by China's strong need to scale up crop yields, which lag far behind developed economies, Chinese agrochemical producer ChemChina acquired Switzerland-based Syngenta AG in 2017. After a restructuring last year, the new Syngenta Group is currently in the middle of an IPO in Shanghai. Its prospectus shows 12 percent of the $10 billion it plans to raise will be used to fund MAP's expansion.

Syngenta is not the only firm aiming to capitalize on this new undertaking. With Beijing's resolve to promote digital agriculture becoming clearer in the last three years or so, many startups and venture capital funds have ventured into the sector, vying for a slice of the huge and relatively untapped market.

"The overall drive to digitize crop farming is at a very early stage," You Liangzhi, senior research fellow at International Food Policy Research Institute, told CGTN. "Most of the companies have not yet made their platforms profitable. But government incentives have played a big part in facilitating their growth."

Beijing-based Kebai Sciences is one of the smaller agri-tech firms riding the wave of this nationwide campaign. With prize-winning smart farming systems, the company has been awarded the tender to operate dozens of demonstration projects across the country and abroad, but profit-wise it has not yet established something sustainable.