Inside the smart greenhouse at the Shandong Shuifa Aerospace Modern Agricultural Industrial Park in Qingyun County, the temperature stays at a comfortable 20°C. Tomato vines grow tall and healthy, covered with red and green fruit. Outside the greenhouse, workers sort and pack the tomatoes. Forklifts then load the boxes onto trucks bound for markets in Beijing, Tianjin, and the Yangtze River Delta.
The smart greenhouse covers about 107 mu, or roughly 7.8 hectares, and contains more than 60,000 tomato plants. The greenhouse is now in its peak production period. Daily output is over 10 tons and is expected to stay at this level until June next year.
Zhang Weiheng, a plant protection and horticulture engineer at Shandong Shuifa Aerospace Modern Agriculture Technology Co., Ltd., explained that the strong and stable harvest is mainly due to a new heating system. This year, the company switched to geothermal energy to heat the greenhouse. The new system allows better temperature control and has improved both yield and quality. The fruit set rate has increased by more than 15 percent compared with previous years. The tomatoes also reached the market earlier, bringing higher economic returns.
In the past, the greenhouse was heated with natural gas. Each heating season used more than 1.25 million cubic meters of gas, leading to high energy costs and significant carbon emissions. Annual heating expenses reached about 5.6 million yuan.
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