Current Status of Pepper Transplanting and Demand for Intelligent Transplanting Equipment: An Empirical Analysis of 813 Farmer Questionnaires from 15 Provinces in China

DOI: https://doi.org/10.62517/jlsa.202607403

Author(s)

Mingxi Yu1,#, Zhengyu Long1,#, Ge Liu1, Junlin Chen1, Zhiyin Tan1, Yue Zhang1, Kai Zhang2, Hui Yang1,*

Affiliation(s)

1Yangtze Normal University, Chongqing, China 2Sanjiang University, Nanjing, Jiangsu, China *Corresponding Author #Mingxi Yu and Zhengyu Long contributed equally to this work

Abstract

Transplanting is one of the most labor-intensive and quality-sensitive operations in pepper production. To understand the current state of transplanting among pepper growers and their demand for intelligent transplanting equipment, a questionnaire survey was conducted in September 2026, and 813 valid responses covering 15 provinces were obtained and analyzed through descriptive statistics and grouped cross-tabulation after IP deduplication and response-time screening. The results show that pepper transplanting is still dominated by manual labor: purely manual and mainly manual operations together account for 69.25%, while fully mechanical transplanting accounts for only 9.84%. The primary problem of manual transplanting is high labor intensity and difficulty in hiring workers (54.98%), and the prominent limitations of existing machinery are single functionality (58.92%), poor adaptability to complex terrain (46.86%) and low transplanting accuracy (42.56%), with terrain adaptability being a common concern across all terrain types. In total, 70.11% of the farmers are willing to adopt fully integrated equipment; this willingness is highest among medium-scale households (10-500 mu, 1 mu is approximately 666.7 square meters) and follows an inverted U-shaped pattern. The mainstream acceptable price is concentrated in the range of CNY 10,000-50,000 (55.59%), and equipment price (64.94%) and policy subsidies (50.31%) are the primary purchase factors. Accordingly, this paper identifies a triple mismatch in pepper transplanting mechanization - between labor dependence and machinery supply, between single functionality and the demand for integration, and between the acceptable price and product cost - and proposes recommendations for the R&D and extension of intelligent transplanting equipment in terms of hilly-terrain adaptability, modular cost reduction and subsidy coordination.

Keywords

Pepper; Transplanting Mechanization; Intelligent Agricultural Equipment; Farmer Demand; Hilly and Mountainous Areas

References

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