Digital intelligence empowers the sweet industry. Guangxi Laibin accelerates the creation of a high-quality development benchmark for the national sugar industry

China News Service, Guangxi Laibin, November 11 (Xie Renfeng, Mo Dunjia) Laibin City, Guangxi held a press conference on the 11th to introduce that the local government uses artificial intelligence and digital technology as a breakthrough to cultivate new productivity in the sugar industry and accelerate the construction of a new sugar industry ecosystem with a "smart chain future". In the just-concluded 2025/2026 crushing season, the output value of the entire sugar production and comprehensive utilization industry chain in Laibin City exceeded 16 billion yuan, taking the sweet industry to a new level.

Laibin City adheres to the integrated promotion of "good land, good seeds, good methods, good opportunities, good technology, and good strategies" to promote sugar cane production to bid farewell to traditional empirical management and protection and shift to data-driven precision management. In the 2025/2026 crushing season, the sugar cane planting area in Laibin City is 2.0285 million acres, the sugar cane entering the factory is 10.8357 million tons, and the sugar output is 1.4078 million tons. The three indicators have reached a new high in the past ten years. Nowadays, the coverage rate of improved sugarcane varieties has reached 99.76%. Laibin City has laid out the construction of 307 step-by-step machines to collect impurities. The yield of sugar cane machines has increased to 13.57%. The purchase and sale of orders throughout the crushing season is stable and orderly, laying a solid foundation for stable industry production.

In recent years, Laibin City has promoted artificial intelligence (AI) and big data throughout the entire chain of sugarcane planting, sugar processing, transportation capacity dispatching, and industrial services, striving to create a "Laibin model" for the smart sugar industry. An "air-sky-ground" integrated digital sugarcane field system has been built in the field, relying on AI to carry out real-time early warning and precise prevention and control of pests and diseases; the "Didi Agricultural Machinery" online platform has broken through the supply and demand barriers for agricultural machinery, and has completed operations of more than 25,000 acres, increasing the utilization rate of agricultural machinery by 30%. On the production side, eight core sugar companies in Laibin City have completed intelligent management and control transformation; on the governance side, the country's first municipal-level sugar industry model has been implemented, which collects more than 4 million pieces of sugar-related industry data and has nine major functions such as pest and disease identification, planting plan push, and weather warning, making industrial management more refined and efficient.

A sugarcane is "eaten dry and squeezed out", and the circular economy continues to release value-added space. The city focuses on strengthening the five major cyclic industrial chains of deep processing of cane sugar essence, bagasse, molasses, filter mud and sugarcane leaves. A number of benchmark projects have been implemented and have achieved results. It has built the country's largest rock sugar production base, bagasse pulp degradable and environmentally friendly tableware production base, and cultivated the largest single yeast enterprise in China. At present, the utilization rate of bagasse, molasses and filter mud has reached 100%, and the comprehensive utilization rate of sugarcane leaves has increased to 91.06%. Two sugar companies have been rated as national green factories. The country's first carbon sink monitoring system for the sugar industry has been implemented here. Guangxi is at the forefront of green and low-carbon transformation.

Laibin continues to improve the mechanism of linking farmers with farmers and safeguards the bottom line of income increase for sugarcane farmers. The insurance rate of sugarcane policy agricultural insurance has stabilized at over 80%. Facing the front line of planting, technical training is carried out on a regular basis. In 2026, a total of more than 25,000 sugarcane farmers will be trained. Relying on the platforms of the National Sugarcane Engineering Technology Research Center and the Sugar Cane Artisan College, independent breeding of sugarcane is steadily advancing and is expected to achieve a historic breakthrough in independent cultivation of varieties. At the same time, the continuous exploration of sugarcane sea scenery, sugar intangible cultural heritage and other resources has promoted Laibin Sugar Industry to accelerate its transformation from a large output market to a strong brand market.

The new crushing season is about to begin. Laibin City will continue to build a technological, green, quality, brand and open sugar industry, iteratively optimize the sugar industry model, make the circular economy bigger and stronger, and promote the deep integration of the sugar industry with cultural tourism. We will strive to import more than 11 million tons of sugar cane into the factory in the 2026/2027 crushing season, continue to polish the "sweet guest" business card, and strive to build a high-quality development benchmark for the national sugar industry.