December 14th, 2018, GUANGZHOU China – XAG’s annual conference XAAC 2018 was successfully held in Guangzhou, under the theme of “the Future of Digital Farming”. - XAG launched an upgraded P Series Plant Protection UAS and a brand-new MultifunctionalUAS Platform - XMission. - Meanwhile, the conference also unveiled a series of aftersales service plans, and a strategic brand - XAG Education. - Partners from around the world, experts in various fields, scholars and industry leaders were invited to share cutting-edge views on how to empower agricultural production with technology and big data. - The annual gathering of agricultural science and technology attracted more than 1200 attendees, while more than 50, 000 people watched online streaming at the same time.2019 P Series Plant Protection UASXMission LaunchAt the opening address, Bayer Crop Science Greater China Country Head Weidong Huang and Ant Financial Vice President of Branding and Corporate Communications Liang Chen gave keynote speeches.Weidong Huang said, “Only when the newly emerged tech solving actual problems for users can it develop sustainably and be accepted by the market and consumers. In our analysis, digital farming, including UAS plant protection technologies, has been through such process, and will enter a stage of stable development.”Liang Chen pointed out that, “the collaboration with XAG has attracted a lot of young population return to their rural hometown. We hope to do more collaborations like this and give more possibilities to rural China and agriculture itself.”In the keynote session on "the Future of Digital Farming," industry experts were invited to give presentations on stage, including Glenn McTaggart, CEO of LandMark Group Australia; Lin Tong, director of new business at Bayer Crop Science (China); Zheng Jia, deputy general manager of rural finance department at Ant Financial; Professor Yubin Lan, academicians of European Academy of Science, Arts and Humanities; Huaze Gong, co-founder and CEO of McFly Technology; Dr. Mingbao Zeng of Canada's A & L Laboratories. They shared thoughts about the cooperation opportunities and possibilities of digital farming from different fields and perspectives.XAG VP Justin Gong gave speech on microtrends in agriculture, “To grasp the future direction of agriculture, we must pay attention to the microtrends in it. Microtrends can help us better understand the general trend of agricultural development and seize new opportunities in the next round of changes in production relations.”Data indicates that UAS plant protection is still a microtrend in agriculture. There are around 50,000 professionals working for UAS plant protection related fields in China. Yet this number is merely one out of ten thousand (0.001%) of the total agricultural professionals, but already accounts for 5% of the farmland automation in China. Such microtrend is affecting greatly to the agricultural industry. 99% of the people might not know about advantages of UAS plant protection, however, they are already consuming the farm product managed by UAS and related digital farming tools.Despite the fact that the generation born in 1980s and 1990s is serving as the major work force in UAS plant protection, more and more senior users are joining the industry as well.  As more and more 1960s, 1970s generation joining the industry, their role in UAS plant protection workflow will be differentiated from the younger users. XAG President Bin Peng explained how the company is implementing UAS and other technologies in agriculture to diversify the industry. Through the introduction of innovative console methods, XAG aims to bring more flexibility to UAS plant protection professionals, refining division of labor, thus improving relations of production in agriculture.In later part of XAAC 2018, a panel discussion on “Agriculture, from Mechanization to Digitalization” was held with experts from China’s agricultural machinery associations and research institutes. The launch of XAG Education announced UAS application related courses to enter colleague and undergraduate education system, aiming to nurture more professionals for agricultural plant protection and UAS application in order to achieve sustainable development of the industry.Newly released product features:- 2019 P Series Plant Protection UAS comes with IP67 protection rating, and all modules are rinseable.- 2019 P Series Plant Protection UAS adopts a fast assembly airframe design, largely reduced the amount of screws on board with the aim to simplify maintenance difficulties, meanwhile strengthens the protection to core modules of the UAS against impact.- New smart liquid tank for P Series Plant Protection UAS can detect liquid volume without flowmeters, and capacity has upgraded to maximum of 16L.- Fast charger improves the battery rotation in operation, the charging time has reduced from over 45mins to within 30mins.- New ACB1 digital communication backclip and ACS1 single-handed controller, together with PilotPhone and ARC1 to form multiple control schemes.- SUPERX3 Pro Flight Controller enables greater capacity, allowing threeIMU and two RTK positioning and navigation modules, as well as all-rounded obstacle avoidance system.- XMission Multi-purpose UAS is light and foldable, while equipped with RTK precision positioning module.- XMisson is capable of attaching various camera modules on board for orthophoto, multispectral images, prescription map or other imaging purpose.- XMission provides SDK for users to customize operations according to needs.For detail enquiries, please contact: info@xag.cn 

December 2018, GUANGZHOU China – XAG’s Research and Development Center in Guangzhou officially released the "XAG Agricultural IoT System”. The XAG Agricultural IoT System is composed of a series of farmland IoT devices and application software. This release of the XIoT kit includes: XAG® FarmCam 1, XAG® FarmMonitor 2, and the WeChat-based "Electronic Guardian" Mini Programs, as an important part of the intelligent agro-ecology of the science and technology at XAG. At XAAC 2017, the company unveiled its first-generation farmland monitoring station, Field Monitor 1, which was affectionately known by farmers as the "electronic guardian". As an agricultural monitoring and recording device which is completely powered by solar energy and connected by the mobile communication network, XAG FM1 opens up a new possibility of agricultural production.  From the dragon fruit base in Guangdong to the ant forest in Alxa, from the winery in Australia to the black soil land in Northeast China, FM1 has been widely used in various occasions.  After one year of application, through further research, development and iteration, XAG introduces two new products, XAG® FarmCam 1 and XAG® FarmMonitor 2. Crop growth is mainly affected by atmospheric environment and soil environment. By accurately recording the soil and meteorological data of crop growth in the production process, the growth status and yield of crops can be predicted. Through in-depth research in agronomy and other related fields, the XAG Agricultural IoT System uses the FC1 and the FM2 to translate the natural codes into field images, data messages, and field prescriptions.  In agricultural production, every day will produce a lot of data, light, air temperature and humidity, soil fertility, crop growth and so on. XAG’s R&D team believes that data collection and management, analysis of crop types, categories and growth cycles can help farmers to precisely apply chemicals, as a way to reduce the waste of pesticides and fertilizers, improve crop yields and reduce agricultural management costs.  The goal of applying XAG Agriculture IoT System is to let farmers see and understand the information transmitted by nature, make scientific agricultural decision-making.  Meanwhile, trace from the source of food production is a key process of food safety for the consumer market. Letting consumers see the process of agricultural production can help reduce misunderstandings caused by lack of information. It is of great significance to ensure food safety and reshape the trust relationship between consumers and agricultural production. 

November 2018, Guangzhou China – XAG announced that it will host the XAG Annual Conference 2018 (XAAC 2018) on December 14th, presenting the theme as “The Future of Digital Farming”. XAG will release a series of new products and services with partners in digital farming by then. Growers, users, partners, and experts in agriculture from over 15 countries are invited, will discuss how digital farming as a tool can contribute to solve the problems of food safety and security, ultimately, make world’s agriculture smarter and more sustainable. In the past two years, Chinese agricultural companies have been looking at the sector of digital farming, expecting how the introducing of ICT can digitize traditional farming workflow in the whole cycle of agriculture, including cultivating, seeding, management, harvesting, etc., making farming more accurate, more efficient and more sustainable.  Many of those companies want to grab this rare opportunity, however, the road to digital farming is harder than expected. “The future of digital farming is a race of no-return.” said Justin Gong, co-founder of XAG. XAG’s road to digital farming has not been a plain sailing as well. Co-founder of XAG, Justin GongToday, digitization has become the top of the wave of global business development. Agriculturalsectors are not the only ones looking for the way of digital transformation. At the G20 Hangzhou Summit, G20 leaders endorsed the first digital economy policy document - G20 Digital Economy Development and Cooperation Initiative. Developing digital economy is becoming a global consensus and is also known as the key to the fourth Industrial Revolution. However, most of the entities have fallen on the road of digital transformation. On 11 Sept., Zhu Wei, Chairman of Accenture Greater China, revealed that only 7% of Chinese enterprises had made a significant achievement on digital transformation, with revenue growth of 7 percent being 5.5 times that of other companies, and the profit margin on sales is 2.4 times than others.  As one of the leading agri-tech companies in China, XAG chose to bring out the concept of “the future of digital farming” when China’s agriculture is considered less developed. Can it really promotes the application of digitization in agriculture under such condition? Can any of China’s agribusinesses become that 7% of the success in this transformation? XAG's footprints on digital farming can be seen from its development path in the past few years. XAG has been focusing on researching and developing smart and precision farming tools since 2013 and had released a series of spraying drones, plant protection UAS, to the market. In 2016, XGEOMATICS, sub-brand of XAG, was established, to provide farmers with integrated solution of farmland information management, plant protection, Farmland IoT technology, and high-precision geographic information, by utilzing UAS aerial surveying, GIS, cloud computing, etc., help farmers make better decision. In 2017, XAG entered intelligent agriculture field jointly with Ant Financial, implementing AI into plant protection equipment. By 2018, XAG, Bayer, and Alibaba Rural Taobao reached a strategic cooperation, together launched the Sustainable Farming Programme. Soon after that, XAG represented China’s agri-tech company established strategic partnership with Harper Adams University in the UK, which has in-depth research in agriculture, agricultural machinery and sustainable development.  Justin Gong said, “The role of XAG is not limited as a manufacturer of agricultural drones, but the company will also increase the investment in research into AI and farming robots areas, further making world’s agriculture smarter.” It can be seen that XAG has already begun to layout for digital farming for years. XAG and Bayer Established Strategic Collaboration in JapanXAG’s choice of partnership also strengthen its global vision of digital farming. Bayer, one of the global 500 companies, XAG's strategic partner, launched a digital farming solution  ‘XARVIO’ in 2017, which could help farmer easily and efficiently identify weeds, diseases, pests, crop nitrogen content and damages through smartphones. In subsequent year 2018, Bayer received The Climate Corporation, a digital agriculture company, after the Monsanto acquisition. Climate’s digital farming platform FieldView™ was launched in 2015, has applied in more than 120 million acres of field globally, of which 35 million acres in the United States are paid services, and its number of users has exceeded 100 thousand totally.XAG, Bayer and Alibaba Rural Taobao Launched the Sustainable Farming ProgrammeChina’s leading agri-tech company XAG, with Bayer’s deployment of global digital farming, have made one big step closer to make global agriculture smarter. In June this year, Bayer, XAG and Alibaba Rural Taobao jointly initiated the Sustainable Farming Programme, together build novel concept demonstration farms globally. In the foreseeable future, farmers can reduce production costs and risks through utilizing XAG’s smart farming tools and farmland information management system; yield and income can be increased by learning from Bayer’s knowledge of crop science and innovative plant protection solutions; and farmer can get better price premium on their productions through Alibaba Rural Taobao’s more transparent traceable supply chain. These series of actions are not only making agriculture more competitive, and also beneficial to the global ecology.  This year, XAG will release a series of new products and services around digital farming, building up an organic brand ecosystem with global contributors in digital farming.