Irrigation and fertilization equipment, simple intelligent water and fertilizer integration apparatus main buyer country

When you hear aboutsimple intelligent water and fertilizer integration apparatus, you immediately imagine a panel with three buttons - but in fact, even Chinese manufacturers like Shandong Linyao Intelligent Agriculture Technology LLC have been unable for years to simplify the interfaces to a level that an agronomist in Kazakhstan or Belarus can understand without a month of training. The main buyer country from the CIS still prefers separate systems - dosing pumps in one corner of the field, irrigation controllers in the other. And you understand their skepticism: in 2021 we set up a demo zone in the Krasnodar region, whereintegration of water and fertilizersbroke due to calcium in the water - the farmer then washed the drip lines for a week.

Technical compromises that no one advertises

If we take a standard project fromShandong Lingyao Co.,Ltd, there in the specifications they proudly write about dosing accuracy of ±2%. But no one clarifies that this only works at a pressure above 3 bar - and in most farms in Uzbekistan, a stable 2.5 bar is already considered a luxury. You have to either install additional pumping stations (which kills the economics of the project), or put up with a drawdown in accuracy of up to 5-7%. That's why theyirrigation equipmentThey are often equipped with Chinese frequency converters with a power reserve - but this also increases the cost by 15-20%.

I remember that in 2022, near Almaty, they introduced a system with remote control of valves - in theory, everything was perfect: soil moisture sensors, a weather station, a fertilizing algorithm. In practice, it turned out that at temperatures below -15°C, Chinese solenoid valves (equipment for irrigation and fertilizationthe same Shandong Lingyao) require heating - and this adds another 30% to energy consumption. Farmers eventually switched to manual control during critical days, negating all “intelligence”.

The most unpleasant thing is whenintegration of water and fertilizersdepends on the human factor. In Kazakhstan (the main buyer country for medium-sized projects), old-school agronomists simply do not trust automation. I saw how in the tomato fields near Shymkent operators made corrections “by eye?” over the system’s recommendations - because “the algorithm does not take into account the wind from the foothills?” And they were right - after calibration for local conditions, the yield increased by 8%.

Why Filtration Remains a Bottleneck

In project descriptionsirrigation equipmentalways comes with fine filters - but rarely does anyone specify that when working with fertilizer suspensions, mesh filters require washing every 4-6 hours. On the websitelyzhihuinongye.ruThey honestly write about automatic backwashing, but in the realities of Turkmenistan, where the water is full of suspended matter, this leads to excess water consumption by 20%. It is necessary to install additional settling tanks - which already contradicts the concept of “simple?” apparatus.

It is interesting that in projects for the vineyards of Crimea, Shandong Lingyao completely abandoned their standard filters and installed Italian disc filters. Local agronomists insisted, citing the experience of 2019, when native filters could not cope with the high iron content in the water. This is about the question of why readyintegration of water and fertilizersrarely works without adaptation - each region makes its own adjustments.

By the way, about fertilizers - they have their own specifics. Russian manufacturers of liquid UAN-32 often add stabilizers, which form sediment upon contact with some pipeline materials. In one of the projects near Voronezh, we had to urgently replace plastic pipes with stainless steel - sediment clogged not only the filters, but also the dispensers. Nowsimple smart deviceWe always test with local fertilizers before launch.

Economics versus functionality

The main country of the buyer is from the CIS - it is always a question of price. When Shandong Linyao Intelligent Agriculture Technology LLC offers a system for 60 thousand euros per hectare, and a local integrator assembles an analogue for 35, the choice is obvious, even with a loss in accuracy. But the Chinese are not to blame - theyequipment for irrigation and fertilizationincludes telemetry, weather forecast, soil moisture analytics... And a farmer in the Rostov region often just needs a pump with a timer.

Paradox: the simpler they try to make the interface, the more expensive the hardware costs. I saw their latest development - a touch screen with three icons: “watering”, “fertilizer”, “stop”. But for these icons to work, you need expensive EC/pH sensors, controllers with a reserve of computing power, stable Internet... In the endsimple smart deviceturns out to be more difficult to maintain than professional systems - because there is no access to the “kitchen?” algorithms.

By the way, about algorithms - in Shandong Lingyao they use machine learning to calculate dosages. But when I requested data to calibrate the model for local conditions, they sent me a set of coefficients without explanation. Like, “trade secret?” This is how we work - we select settings at random, although we should have received a ready-made solution.

What do farmers really need?

After a dozen implementations I realized: the main thing isintegration of water and fertilizers- not accuracy, but maintainability. In the Kazakh steppe, where the service center is 300 km away, the system should work even with a failed pH meter. Therefore, now we always duplicate automation with manual modes - contrary to the manufacturer’s recommendations. Chinese engineers are indignant, but farmers sleep peacefully.

An interesting point: in Uzbekistan, where water is a scarce resource, it is not the “smart” people who value it more. functions, but savings. Thereirrigation equipmentwith accurate consideration of drainage is more important than complex feeding schemes. Shandong Lingyao offers systems with drainage measurement - but their cost pays off only on premium-segment crops such as safflower or alfalfa.

The main country of the buyer also dictates the approach to documentation - in Belarus they require instructions in Russian with step-by-step diagrams, in Kyrgyzstan they more often ask for video instructions in Telegram. Chinese manufacturers are slowly adapting - their manuals are still full of tracing paper from English. We have to translate and simplify ourselves - for example, replace the “initialization of the calibration sequence?” on ?press button 1, then button 2?.

Outlook - where the market is heading

Judging by the latest tenders,simple intelligent water and fertilizer integration apparatusgradually ceases to be exotic. But there is a growing demand for hybrid solutions - where you can buy additional modules gradually. Shandong Linyao LLC just announced such a system - a base unit for 15 thousand euros with the ability to add sensors. I wonder if they will be able to maintain compatibility between generations of equipment - previous versions suffered from problems with firmware updates.

The main buyer country in the coming years will probably remain Russia and Kazakhstan, but with a caveat: if China does not offer preferential financing. Now theyequipment for irrigation and fertilizationloses to its Israeli counterparts in credit programs - European banks are more willing to finance Netafim than Shandong Linyao.

Personally, I believe that the breakthrough will not be in technology, but in service. When Chinese companies begin to employ engineers in the regions (as Jain Irrigation does in India), thenintegration of water and fertilizerswill become truly massive. In the meantime, we are working in the “installed - trained - left - fix it yourself” mode. Not the most reliable foundation for a technological revolution in agriculture.