At a modern agricultural park on Shanghai’s Chongming Island, containers-turned-plant factories stood ready for action on February 13.
This is the venue of the Third Smart Agriculture Competition, an annual precision farming contest launched by e-commerce platform Pinduoduo, an app originally designed to connect farmers with consumers directly. The competition, with around 80 percent of participants born after 1990, has become a platform where young and talented researchers in the fields of agriculture and technology can work on real-life problems faced by smallholder farmers. It has also become a testing field for agricultural technology born in the laboratory. This year’s edition was organized by Pinduoduo and Bright Seedbase Technology, the seedling arm of Chinese food and beverage conglomerate Bright
