Buy drones to fight pesticides in rural areas

With the development of drone technology and the growing demand for drones for spraying pesticides, planting and seeding, etc. in China’s agriculture, the industrial drone market has begun to flourish. And drone pilots have more degrees of freedom and work flexibility, and more and more young people are starting to join the industry.

Although it has been ten years since she left a small car maker in Wuhan, Zhu Beibei still remembers the pungent smell of rubber tires. At the age of 19, after graduating from a technical school, Zhu Beibei found her first job in that factory with a monthly salary of 900 yuan and often worked overtime. He resigned after six months.

“I need to get up at 2 pm when I work in the factory and work all night until 10 am,” Zhu Beibei, 29, said in an interview. “Every day I work like a robot, and I don’t have much spare time. Can’t talk to people either. I don’t see any hope of a promotion or an opportunity to improve my skills.”

After leaving the company, Zhu Beibei has done various jobs and sold agricultural products. A friend later asked him if he had piloted a drone. Zhu Beibei had no previous experience with drones, but after five days of training, he became a qualified drone pilot and joined a drone company that sprays pesticides.

Today, Zhu Beibei has his own company with 30 drone pilots. The company helps farmers spray herbicides every year, and the income reaches 3 million yuan.

Not bad for a farmer’s son. Zhu Beibei’s mother once complained that her son had quit his factory job without authorization because the job offered retirement benefits. But after Zhu Beibei worked in Xinjiang for 45 days and earned 80,000 yuan with a drone, her mother smiled.

As the technology has matured, so has the demand for agricultural drone pilots, enabling skilled drone pilots to cover larger areas of land than humans can reach.

Currently, farmers in rural China often choose to lease their land to companies. Companies are able to integrate and exploit economies of scale, deploying technologies such as drone spraying to increase agricultural yields. In other countries such as Japan, drones have also been used locally for operations.