A ‘Silent Spring’ for Jiangnan’s Silkworm Farmers After Drone Spraying

This March, news of pollinating bees being “accidentally harmed” by drones in rapeseed fields caught the public eye. Yet beyond the spotlight, another insect that has coexisted with human civilisation for millennia—the domestic silkworm—is facing a far more insidious and severe survival crisis.

“Once the drones take flight, all your silkworm-rearing goes to waste”—silkworms are extraordinarily vulnerable to pesticides and environmental shifts. Many “low-toxicity” chemicals, and even biological pesticides, are harmless to humans but highly toxic to silkworms. Pesticide spray drift from drones exacerbates the problem further: poisoned silkworms struggle to spin silk, form thin-shelled cocoons, or are simply discarded by farmers into the woods.

When “efficiency” becomes the agricultural benchmark, technology is quietly reshaping ancient sericulture traditions. In the past, a brickyard in a Jiangnan water town would halt operations during the traditional silkworm-rearing season to ensure clean air; nowadays, no one gives you a warning before the spraying begins.

In this episode, we start with the recent controversy over poisoned bees and head into the Jiangnan water towns to speak with a silkworm farmer who returned home 14 years ago. He explains how drone spraying causes mass silkworm poisoning, how traditional sericulture systems are being squeezed out, and what kind of future industrialised farming is bringing with it.

This episode’s guest, Yu Jiangang (Yuguang / “Fish Tank”), was born into a multi-generational sericulture family on the South Taihu Plain. Growing up, he helped his family harvest mulberry leaves and feed silkworm larvae; even the village cats were named after the traditional silkworm-rearing cycles. He later left home for university, worked in Beijing, and threw himself into rural community work, before choosing in 2011 to return to the land and attempt to rebuild a silkworm–rice–human pastoral ecosystem. More than a decade on, he continues to wrestle with a single question: in today’s world, can traditional agriculture still find a foothold in the cracks?

Torn between efficiency, ecology, and culture, what exactly are we losing? And are these changes truly irreversible? If this seemingly small but vital topic matters to you, please click to listen to this episode.

00:21 Why is a drone spraying incident that killed bees worth our attention?

02:26 Starting from the South Taihu Plain, what was the traditional mulberry-dike fish-pond ecosystem?

04:43 Why did every household once rear silkworms, while only a few hold on today?

08:28 From an occasional occurrence to a common reality, why is this type of pesticide spray drift increasingly difficult to prevent?

12:47 Insurance covers only a third, prompting sericulturists to abandon rearing by the second year

14:28 The ‘Mulberry Shift from East to West’ initiative: can smallholders actually make a profit?

19:16 Industrialised sericulture: silkworms fed soybean-based feed, spinning silk all year round. Is it really necessary?

25:06 From harmonious coexistence to ‘mutual harm’, are we losing a traditional way of life?

29:56‘First Silkworm Cat’, ‘Second Silkworm Cat’: how does sericulture shape the rhythm of time in Jiangnan’s water towns?

31:58 How much does a sericulturist actually earn from a single silk quilt?

34:35 To prevent the silkworms from being poisoned again, Yu Jiangang (‘Fish Tank’) contracted 15 mu of rice paddy

39:42 Creating a sanctuary, much like housing rain frogs in a zoo

48:00 How to support? Buy rice, co-create, share