Global Agricultural Facilities: Core Functions & Advancements
Agricultural facilities break free from seasonal and natural climate constraints of traditional farming, significantly boosting crop and livestock yields while ensuring year-round balanced supply of vegetables, fruits, meat, eggs, and milk. Below are key technologies:
1. Mulching
Most countries use 0.2-0.3mm thick polyethylene transparent film (a quarter of total film types) for field mulching. It raises soil temperature, retains moisture, accelerates organic matter decomposition, and boosts yields—enabling thermophilic crops to expand 2-4 latitudes northward, extending frost-free periods by 10-15 days, and improving dryland water use efficiency by 30%-50%. In mild saline areas, combined with nutrient bowl transplanting, cotton and corn seedling survival rates reach 80%-90%. Absorption-type, weed-inhibiting plastic films are now available; biodegradable, pollution-free bio-films are under biotech development, along with various mulching-laying equipment.
2. Greenhouse Horticulture
It includes plastic greenhouses (top users: China, Italy, Spain, France, Japan) and modern glass greenhouses (leading countries: Netherlands, Japan, UK, France, Germany). Greenhouses auto-control temperature, humidity, irrigation, ventilation, CO₂ concentration, and light—yielding 30-50kg of tomatoes, 40kg of cucumbers, or 180 roses per m² annually (over 10x that of open fields). High energy consumption and costs are major issues; developed countries now adopt energy-saving measures (insulation curtains, double glazing, multi-layer coverage, solar use) to cut energy use by ~50%. The US, Japan, and Italy also build greenhouses in warm regions for thermophilic crops to reduce energy consumption.
3. Greenhouse Soilless Cultivation
A cutting-edge method using nutrient solutions or substrate-nutrient solution mixes to supply nutrients more effectively than soil, fostering crop growth. It’s applied in greenhouse production across over 100 countries.
4. Plant Factories
A highly specialized, modern facility beyond greenhouses, it fully decouples from natural/field conditions, using advanced equipment for manual environmental control to ensure year-round supply. It’s developing rapidly in some countries, initially enabling factory production of vegetables, edible fungi, and rare flowers. The US is researching wheat, rice cultivation, and virus-free plant tissue culture/rapid propagation here. Advantages include: 2-week seedling-to-harvest cycle for lettuce, over 20 annual harvests (10x more than greenhouses, far exceeding open fields); soilless, pesticide-free production of pollution-free vegetables. Currently, only 28 exist globally; high equipment investment and energy consumption (over 50% of production costs) make cost reduction a key future research focus.
