Technology, Pesticides and Drone Pilots: The Other Side of the ‘Technological Revolution’
July is the peak season for concentrated spraying in paddy fields; insecticides, sealants, and nutrients all require drone application. As the drone takes off, its four rotors spin at high speed instantly, emitting a loud “drone”, kicking up a cloud of dust as it rises vertically to a preset height before beginning its automatic flight along a predetermined route, maintaining a steady speed and a straight trajectory.
Compared to compact photography drones, agricultural drones are larger, weighing over 30 kilograms, and possess a stronger load capacity, typically equipped with spraying or seeding devices. During operation, pesticides from the drone’s onboard tank are discharged through nozzles beneath the fuselage; the liquid atomises into a uniform curtain of mist, draping the pale green rice fields in a flowing veil.
In this era of rapid acceleration, which capital describes as “Agriculture 4.0”, a technical revolution is unfolding 300 metres above the ground. Expanding the application scenarios for low-altitude technology was also written into the 2025 Central Document No. 1. Data shows that China is currently the country with the largest application area for agricultural drones in the world, with over 2.1 billion mu-times of operation annually; flight hours for agricultural drones account for 98% of the entire drone industry.
Yet, the industry reports that calculate a market size in the hundreds of billions have never covered the drone users working silently in the fields; the community of pilots is obscured beneath the grand narrative of smart agriculture.
Who exactly is being attracted to the agricultural drone industry? Is being a pilot still an ideal career choice? And what are the lived experiences and reflections of the pilots within the industry?
With these questions in mind, I returned to my hometown in Heilongjiang in the summer of 2024. I found several pilots to conduct research, attempting to understand the true face of the pilot community and the agricultural drone industry.
I. Migratory Pilots
He first encountered drones because agricultural machinery cannot drive right up to the edge of the fields; there were always patches of Yang Ge’s farmland that remained unsprayed, and the weeding effect in the sprayed areas was not particularly good. Then in his twenties, after hearing about the benefits of drone spraying, Yang Ge was introduced to a drone training school in Baotou. After more than four months and 30,000 yuan in tuition fees, he eventually obtained a red certificate issued by the national human resources department—a drone pilot’s licence.
Starting from 2015, agricultural drone hardware and applications developed rapidly. Market holdings and operational areas increased quickly, gradually growing into a massive industrial chain worth billions. At that time, Yang Ge caught the wave of the drones’ rapid ascent.
In less than ten years, Yang Ge gradually built a small aerial prevention team; he and a few partners bought several of the latest drone models and a few high-horsepower electric pickup trucks.
Now, except for working on farms in his Northeast hometown during the summer and autumn, Yang Ge spends almost all his time traversing the country with his drones in his pickup. Particularly in Guangdong, Guangxi, and Hainan, the rapidly surging demand and shortage of labour have provided pilots with a wealth of job opportunities. Every year, after the autumn harvest in the Northeast ends in early October—or even earlier, in September—Yang Ge begins his journey south, working through Henan, Shandong, and Guangxi, finally reaching Hainan, before returning to the Northeast in July or August of the following year.
In Yang Ge’s words, Hainan is simply a pilot’s paradise and his favourite place. Hainan has abundant tropical and subtropical fruit trees and a warm climate year-round, making the working environment comfortable. Simultaneously, the scope of aerial prevention work is broad and the pay is high; for instance, the unit price for passion fruit tree prevention is 15 yuan per mu, which is about three times higher than the price for staple crops like maize or soybeans. Fruit tree spraying requires more water, but the aircraft fly faster and release flow quickly (35 litres per minute), making the spraying efficiency relatively high. Yang Ge says that working in Hainan almost guarantees a net daily income of around 2,000 yuan.
Yang Ge describes aerial prevention in Hainan as always relaxed and carefree: “The work in Hainan is easy. I usually only work for two hours on a plot of land, rest at noon, and if there’s work in the afternoon, I do it; if not, I go play, go to the beach—it’s wonderful.”
Professional pilots like Yang Ge are generally predominantly young to middle-aged men. Most come from rural backgrounds, possessing an emotional connection to and understanding of agriculture, combined with technical skill and equipment knowledge, yet they are unwilling to simply “toil away in the fields” with their backs to the sun, as their fathers’ generation did.
Yang Ge chose to be a pilot because he valued the freedom the profession brings: “I don’t envy those with office jobs. Nine-to-five might be nice, but I feel it’s not free. I can leave whenever I want; I can drive south at any time, I can travel, and after the work is done, I can admire the landscapes. I get to visit many places, make money, have fun, and visit tourist attractions—it’s great.”
But Yang Ge’s ideal of working only two hours a day depends on luck. If the weather is poor, the crops cannot wait, and many pesticides have a strict application window, meaning they must seize the window of good weather to work overtime relentlessly. Working more than ten consecutive hours is common. Pilots are half-technical and half-manual labourers; they must rise before dawn and often work under the scorching sun, which is a great test of physical endurance. They also need to “migrate” on time according to crop growth, like migratory birds, carrying all their equipment and belongings wherever there is work. They finish one job and move to the next, operating across regions from south to north; the income is higher, but the work is harder.
However, they are not like small agricultural tools that every household possesses without price or usage barriers; they are more like tech products with a capital-driven nature. Farmers who know how to fly drones, after cultivating their own land, accept aerial prevention orders from neighbours or local governments at lower prices, hoping to recoup their investment in the machinery as soon as possible.
II. Agricultural Drones Fly into the Homes of Ordinary Farmers
In the county town where I conducted my research, according to the estimates of a DJI drone dealer, there were approximately 200 drones in the entire county by 2024. For an agricultural county with a cultivated area of 207,000 xiang (3.105 million mu), this number is oversaturated.
Zhao Mingliang is also aware that it is almost impossible to break even, let alone make a profit in a single year by purchasing a T60: “I mainly bought it for my own land. Hiring someone else’s drone to spray several times a year costs a few thousand yuan regardless.”
But buying a drone and flying it yourself is not necessarily a profitable deal. He tapped on his calculator to run the numbers for me: “Spraying one mu costs 4 yuan, so one xiang is 60 yuan. To recoup the cost of 55,000, I would need to spray 13,750 mu, which is nearly 1,000 xiang. Then you add in the electricity for charging, labour costs, fuel for travel, machine wear and tear, and so on, and now the industry competition is so fierce. Trying to break even is too difficult.”
Large-scale farmers like Zhao Mingliang hope to provide as many drone spraying services as possible after meeting their own agricultural production needs to recoup the purchase cost of the machine as quickly as possible. However, the speed of drone iteration makes this idea difficult to achieve: “This machine sells for 55,000 this year, but next year the depreciation means it can only be sold for half price! The depreciation is too steep; it’s just like a mobile phone—you replace it every year!”
Zhao Mingliang said: “The T60 is the most advanced this year, with better tank capacity and atomisation effects, so many farmers come to me for spraying. Once a new machine comes out next year, who will still come to you?! Who wouldn’t want to hire a better machine for the same money?!”
The DJI Agriculture official website is no different from any other tech company: the homepage displays several best-selling products and the latest flagship models, using updated iteration numbers to showcase more powerful functions, more advanced technology, and higher productivity. Old products, which have nothing to do with these adjectives, aren’t even displayed on the page. Even the former ace, the T40, which caused a sensation upon release, is treated as if it never existed, swept into the dustbin of history. If consumers want to buy a brand new old product, they can likely only find them in the second-hand or clearance markets.
Consequently, although the usage patterns of agricultural drones are closer to those of traditional farm machinery (such as tractors and harvesters), their upgrade cycle is more akin to consumer electronics. Influenced by marketing that encourages annual upgrades, farmers also tend to hire operators with newer, better machines for fertilising and sowing.
While the goal of breaking even within a year is difficult to achieve, Zhao Mingliang says that farmers who bought drones this year, like himself, are actually waiting for large-scale government aerial spraying contracts.
In recent years, local governments and farms, in order to implement the requirements of higher authorities and the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs to increase production and income, have begun implementing the “Single Spray, Multiple Boosts” policy. Specifically, this involves drone spraying during critical yield periods for major grain crops—such as the grain-filling stage for maize or the pod-filling stage for soybeans—primarily applying foliar fertilisers to promote growth. This is intended to boost unit yields over large areas and ensure a bountiful autumn harvest.
This work is generally directed by the government but operated by the private sector; the government opens tenders for qualified aerial protection companies to carry out the drone operations. However, these companies often cannot handle such massive orders alone, so they outsource them in fragments to individual pilots like Zhao Mingliang.
Zhao Mingliang explains, “In previous years, if the winning company didn’t have enough aircraft, they would usually bring them in from the south. They were cheaper, and once they arrived, we were essentially out of the running. But this year, there are so many more drones locally, and our prices are low, so they’ll definitely use us first!” Zhao has long had his heart set on these large contracts; it was the primary reason he entered the business.
Zhao Mingliang and Brother Yang represent two types of people within the pilot community: one is the large-scale farmer who also acts as a pilot, and the other is the professional pilot.
Professional pilots generally entered the industry earlier. Many were initially interested in model aircraft, drones, various equipment, and apps, and they have a relatively mature understanding of drone technology. For the farmer-pilots, the primary purpose of purchasing a drone is to serve their own agricultural production, while taking on some jobs for other farmers to recoup their costs.
So, after becoming pilots, is their life as wonderful as they expected? What risks and concerns do they face?
III. Pesticide Drift Damage
During application, if pesticides drift into non-target areas, they can cause damage to neighbouring crops (usually those downwind). For example, nicosulfuron, mesotrione, and atrazine are commonly used foliar herbicides for maize. They are characterised by a broad weed-killing spectrum; while safe for maize, if soybeans, rice, or cotton are planted nearby, the drifting chemicals can easily damage these crops. Once pesticide drift occurs, it often leads to complicated disputes between the landowner who ordered the spraying, the pilot, and the landowner whose crops were damaged.
Wang Xing is the only pilot I interviewed who had to compensate a landowner for drift damage. He admitted that he failed to check the weather during his operation, continuing to spray herbicides in a maize field despite a Beaufort scale 3 wind. Consequently, the soybean field downwind suffered damage, with the leaves of nearly a small plot of crops turning yellow and nearly dying.
This dispute was eventually settled with Wang Xing paying 20,000 yuan in compensation. The incident directly influenced Wang Xing’s professional choices: after completing the work on his own land that year, he sold his six-month-old drone at a loss, declaring, “I’m never doing this again.”
Spraying herbicides is a task many pilots approach with extreme caution. If the crop on the target land differs from that of the adjacent plot, Zhao Mingliang simply refuses the job. Brother Yang has instructed his team members to avoid such work if possible; if they must take it, they must check the weather in advance—flights are prohibited if the wind exceeds scale 2—and they must carefully observe the surrounding environment during operation.
These empirical approaches seem to solve the problem on the surface, but as long as drones are used to spray pesticides, drift is inevitable.
Consequently, the aerial protection team led by drone dealer Li Changjiang thought of a way to transfer the risk—signing liability waivers with farmers before spraying herbicides, adding “force majeure fallback clauses” to delineate responsibilities and avoid risk.
However, Li Changjiang does not know if these agreements have true legal effect. Having suffered similar losses himself, he can only insist that his team treat the matter with extreme caution.
Last year, a pilot on Li Changjiang’s team was spraying herbicides in a maize field when the neighbouring soybean field suffered damage. The owner of the soybean field believed the drone spraying was the primary cause, but Li Changjiang insisted that the soybeans had already been sprayed and the damage was caused by the field’s own chemicals. He argued that the widespread wilting and yellowing of the soybeans did not follow the strip-like pattern typical of drone flights and was therefore unrelated to the pilot. That day, the soybean field owner held onto them, refusing to let them leave, and the two parties clashed for a long time.
Eventually, the soybean field owner filed a lawsuit against the pilot in court; the case has yet to be decided. “The money you earn isn’t enough to cover the compensation!” Li Changjiang says. He learned a hard lesson from this experience; henceforth, whenever he encounters herbicide spraying orders, he avoids them if possible, even if a liability waiver is signed.
Currently, this new type of agricultural infringement dispute remains a legal blank, making it very difficult to resolve conflicts arising from drone-induced pesticide drift through legal channels. Searching for “pesticide drift” on short-video platforms reveals numerous unresolved dispute cases.
A more invisible issue is one of environmental ethics. News reports have detailed cases where a beekeeper lost 150 hives of bees to drifting pesticides, and where drone operations over fish ponds led to an increase in the rate of deformity in crucian carp… these ecological disasters similarly require attention and recognition.
In reality, current measurements of drift rates vary significantly between laboratory tests and field trials due to various factors. Existing national standards only test ground deposition and ignore airborne drift values. All of these are directly related to the problem of pesticide drift damage.
Furthermore, the problem of drift damage caused by drone spraying has always faced a technical deadlock. The deadlock lies in the fact that drone manufacturers believe drift damage has little to do with product performance and is primarily caused by improper operation by the pilot. Pilots, on the other hand, believe that while damage is partly related to individual skill, it is more often due to irrationalities in the drone’s spraying technology and operational modes; moreover, they have no channel to provide feedback to the manufacturers.
During the research process, Brother Yang told me that the cause of pesticide drift could be the change in nozzles. “The current centrifugal nozzles provide such fine atomisation that even in a scale 1 wind, the spray can drift at least 20 metres or more. In a scale 2 wind, it’s 50 to 80 metres. Once you hit scale 2 and above, it can actually drift one or two kilometres.”
Brother Yang’s question is: the previous pressure nozzles didn’t drift nearly as far, so why did manufacturers replace them with centrifugal nozzles?
He has gradually formed a hypothesis—manufacturers wanted to demonstrate that atomisation effects are getting better, as the mist produced by centrifugal nozzles looks more impressive. The manufacturers do not consider how much confusion or economic loss this change causes the pilots, or how much it reduces crop yields.
IV. The Unaccounted Costs
He once showed a hospital CT scan to the camera, revealing ‘white lung’—a condition caused by years of spraying pesticides. As self-employed professionals, these pilots have no employee health insurance and no way to report occupational hazards in the workplace. He didn’t know who to hold accountable: the farmers who hired him, or the company that sold him the machinery?
In the process of agricultural production, farmers inevitably suffer physical damage from pesticides. Pilots, too, are aware of the potential health risks associated with drone spraying. Zhao Mingliang described the scene during operation: “When adding pesticides, I don’t know if the different chemicals react with each other, but the smell is overpowering; it really stings the nose. During takeoff and landing, the propellers spin and create a massive wind. If there’s a breeze and the pesticide drifts, it’s a nightmare—those insecticides are incredibly harsh. I think for the veteran pilots who’ve flown for years, if they do it for a long time, it will affect their health. Absolutely.”
Respiratory diseases and skin conditions caused by the penetration of pesticide mists are common occupational illnesses among the pilot community. However, after flying for long periods, many have more or less grown accustomed to enduring these health risks. In this emerging commercialised service industry, some pilots are eventually forced out due to deteriorating health. They bear the hidden costs of technical progress.
Firstly, whether they are professional or non-professional, pilots rarely sign employment contracts with a company or enterprise; therefore, the concept of an ‘occupational disease’ is not covered by their medical insurance. If a disease develops during the course of their work, it is difficult to secure an insurance claim, leaving the costs to be borne by the individual or their family.
Even for the professional pilots who join drone protection teams and sign labour contracts, health damage in the workplace is often dismissed under liability waiver clauses as “improper personal protection”.
Additionally, to make the most of the farming window and favourable weather, professional pilots often have to wake up at two or three in the morning, working all day and sometimes into the early hours. Physical exhaustion and gastrointestinal issues are also common chronic health risks facing this group. In summer, the insects in the fields and the acrid smell of pesticides are so unbearable that pilots must dress in full protective gear, leaving only their eyes exposed. The stifling heat further increases their risk of heatstroke.
V. Pilots Trapped in a Price War
Having passed through a phase of rapid growth, the agricultural drone market is no longer a vast ‘blue ocean’ of employment opportunities. The era of the drone pilot earning ‘two or three thousand a day’ or ‘easily over ten thousand a month’ is over.
Price wars have long since broken out in the drone industry—not over the hardware itself, but over the cost of services. In the first few years after Yang entered the trade, the fee for one mu of land was roughly ten-odd yuan; two years ago, local farms charged about 5.5 yuan per mu, and this year it has gradually dropped to 5 or even 4 yuan. The large-scale government crop protection contract that Zhao Mingliang had his heart set on was eventually subcontracted down to a rate of 2.5 yuan per mu—a price lower than the actual flight cost, forcing many pilots to abandon the work.
There are professional pilots like Yang who once travelled across the country to pick up contracts. However, as the number of drones on the market surged and competition became cut-throat, many found it increasingly difficult to secure enough work and were forced to make a quiet exit.
The professional pilots who manage to survive are those with the most resources, enabling them to secure more orders. Yang belongs to several WeChat groups of nearly 500 members, which serve as information hubs and platforms for exchanging knowledge; aside from his regular clients, most of his orders are found through referrals from fellow pilots or posts within these groups. For them, the key is the ability to ‘do the sums’—understanding the fees and costs associated with different operations (spraying, fertilising, sowing). Their income is directly linked to the volume of work: the more they labour, the more they earn. Conversely, professional pilots who are pushed out by market competition often choose to find work in major cities such as Beijing or Shanghai.
Furthermore, the industry is being divided into increasingly niche sectors and longer supply chains, such as drone technical training and comprehensive ‘machinery + technology + agricultural supplies’ services. Li Changjiang, one of the first in the local area to venture into the drone business, established his own crop protection team while acting as a DJI dealer. Leveraging his company’s credentials, he secured government contracts and collaborated with pesticide and fertiliser manufacturers to implement a ‘bundled chemical’ operational model, allowing his business to expand steadily within the region.
Non-professional pilots, such as large-scale grain farmers, primarily purchase drones for use on their own land, occasionally taking on work for those in their own or neighbouring villages. However, due to market saturation and fierce, unregulated competition—coupled with the fact that many crops in Heilongjiang are single-season, meaning the windows for fertilisation and spraying are short and concentrated—many farmers find no further orders once their own work is complete. Consequently, the hope of quickly recouping their investment often proves futile.
Nevertheless, the volume of orders only affects how quickly the initial investment can be recovered; it does not pose a direct threat to their survival. Additionally, since non-professional pilots operate their drones less frequently, the lifespan of the batteries, motors, and other components is relatively longer, and the drone thus returns to the category of standard agricultural machinery.
Since being listed as one of thirteen new professions by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security and two other departments in April 2019, the lives of agricultural drone pilots have changed dramatically in just a few short years. In the future, with the rise of new types of agricultural management entities, high rates of land transfer, and the evolution of the agricultural supplies market under new conditions, both the agricultural drone industry and the profession of the drone pilot are likely to gain broader recognition.
About the Lianhe Creation Project
Following several rounds of interviews by six judges, 18 creative projects were ultimately selected for support under the Foodthink Lianhe Creation Project, nine of which have already been published:
‹Cleaner A-Mei Just Wants a Proper Meal | The Worker’s Table›
‹In Malaysia, Chinese Traders Only Want Grade A Durians›
‹’Fake Meat’ Displaces Real Meat: Herders, Tables, and the Amazon›
‹Ensuring the Sweetness of Watermelons, Ensuring the Bitterness of Growing Them›
‹From the Guashan Yao to ‘Chosen Mushroom Hunters’: The Termite Mushroom Craze›
‹Ma Lan in Shenzhen Has No Dining Companion›
‹Why Has the Sweetness of Childhood Vanished?›
‹Why Can Guizhou Not Do Without Sour Soup, and Sour Soup Not Do Without Guizhou?›
Interviewees in this text are referred to by pseudonyms
Editor: Xiao Dan