Following the launch of its final satellite in 2020, China's independently-developed BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) is being used in a range of sectors including transportation, public safety, communications, disaster relief and agriculture. 

High-precision location services provided by the BDS are also facilitating smart farming, including the high-precision control of driverless tractors in fields.

With spring plowing underway in many parts of the country, the state-of-the-art technology is being brought to the limelight. 

In a village in Zhongxiang City, central China's Hubei Province, a technician from the local bureau of farm machinery was explaining the use of BeiDou intelligent terminal on agricultural machinery to tractor drivers.

"At first I thought it was difficult to learn, but after I actually began to learn, I found it is easy to use and really convenient for our operation," a driver said after a test run.

With the system, the agricultural machinery can now operate automatically and keep moving in a straight line, even on bumpy surfaces, with a precision of 2 centimeters. It can also avoid repetitive work with careful planning.

"Without BeiDou, we used to sow seeds on 100 to 120 mu (about 6.67 to 8 hectares) of land per day. Now we can quickly sow seeds on 120 mu of land with ease," said Wang Minggang, a tractor driver.

At present, the BeiDou system is widely used in a variety of agricultural process, including plowing, sowing, harvesting, straw treatment and drought resistance work.

"While promoting the application of our systems, we have received positive feedback from the public. This year, we plan to further expand the application and advance the promotion of our intelligent agricultural machinery. We plan to install another 600 sets of automatic driving terminals and 600 sets of BeiDou intelligent monitoring systems," said Wang Qin, head of the promotion team of BeiDou intelligent agricultural machinery in Zhongxiang.