As drones take over crop protection, is there still a place for smallholders?
As global warming intensifies, the Fall Armyworm has emerged as a new risk threatening global agricultural production. In the summer of 2019, during our fieldwork in Jixian (a pseudonym) on the North China Plain, the arrival of the Fall Armyworm put the entire county on a “wartime footing”.
The Fall Armyworm, often referred to as “FAW”, is a major transboundary migratory pest flagged by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. Characterised by its long-distance flight capabilities, strong reproductive capacity, and the significant losses it causes, it primarily attacks crops such as maize and sorghum.
At the time, the summer maize on the North China Plain was in the tasseling and silking stage, a critical period that determines overall yield. A pest outbreak at this stage can severely impact production, making timely prevention and control vital. Consequently, upon discovering traces of the FAW, Jixian immediately established the “Fall Armyworm Monitoring, Early Warning and Prevention and Control Leading Group” and deployed plant protection drones for pest control.
However, farmers in Jixian became deeply anxious as they struggled to secure timely drone pest control services (known as “aerial prevention”). With a limited number of plant protection drones available, it was impossible to meet the needs of all farmers in a short window. Unable to influence the order of service, the farmers could only wait in frustration, like ants on a hotplate.
I. From Mastery to Detachment: The Relationship Between Farmers and Technology
During this period, agricultural technicians travelled to villages to provide guidance and teach advanced farming techniques. Jixian’s farmers not only benefited from the public agricultural services provided by the state and government but also mastered more scientific methods for grain cultivation and plant protection.
Villagers told us: “Back then, seeds, fertilisers, and pesticides were all allocated by the government. The village agriculture captain and the technician taught us how to use them, how much to apply, and what the benefits were; they explained everything clearly.”
In this era, high-quality and efficient agricultural inputs promoted by the government—such as phosphate and nitrogen-phosphorus mixed fertilisers—along with techniques like crop transplanting and wheat leaf rust control, were applied directly to production through the farmers’ own practice. A wave of heavy machinery, including tractors from Poland and Czechoslovakia, entered the daily lives of Jixian’s farmers. Under the hands-on guidance of technicians, farmers mastered these technologies, leading to a significant increase in grain yields.
Following the Reform and Opening-up in 1978, agricultural extension entered a marketisation period, where agricultural input retailers began promoting advanced technologies in villages through paid services. As the market economy developed, many agricultural technicians “went into business”, opening retail shops in market towns. These grassroots retail markets took over the heavy lifting of agricultural technology promotion.
For local farmers, these retailers were often neighbours or acquaintances. Through years of interaction, they built relationships based on mutual trust. These retailers were either former technicians or practitioners with a strong grasp of agricultural knowledge, making them highly favoured by the farmers.
Farmers in Jixian would frequently visit these shops to buy seeds, pesticides, and fertilisers. Some would even pull up diseased crops from their fields and bring them to the retailer to be “diagnosed” on the spot, ensuring they received the “right medicine” for the problem.
These new entities have invested significant capital and possess superior agricultural technologies, achieving a mechanisation rate of 100%. At this point, farmers are no longer the recipients or practitioners of agricultural technology; instead, a simple phone call is all it takes to obtain the necessary technical services: “We just pay the money; we don’t care what pesticides they use or how much, as long as it works.”
It is this shift in the model of agricultural technology promotion that has given rise to the dilemma of technology application among Jixian’s farmers described at the beginning of this article.
II. Do Farmers Still Need to Master Technology to Farm?
During our field investigation, we found that technology promotion projects in Jixian are increasingly being “bundled” and handed over to a single agricultural technology company—Blue Sky Dream Agricultural Technology Co., Ltd (a pseudonym, hereinafter “Blue Sky Dream”). Between 2014 and 2019, Blue Sky Dream successively undertook more than ten professional unified prevention and control projects for crop pests and diseases in Jixian, including the “One Spray, Three Protections” for winter wheat and “One Spray, Multiple Effects” for the mid-to-late stages of maize.
For various reasons, promoting technology directly to individual farmers has become increasingly unrealistic.
Firstly, smallholders operating fragmented plots have their own production habits and ideas, making it difficult to meet the requirements of new technical promotions.
Taking plant protection projects as an example, to achieve green prevention and control, the government mandated the “use of low-toxicity, high-efficiency pesticides” and a “6% reduction in pesticide use over three years”. However, farmers require pesticides that are affordable and effective; because low-toxicity pesticides are “slow to act and expensive”, farmers feel that “for ordinary people, it is better to buy high-toxicity ones, as the insects die much faster”.
In contrast, Blue Sky Dream claims that the pesticides used during drone operations meet government guidance standards, and that pesticide use naturally decreases as long as drones are used for spraying: “When using aircraft for herbicides, the amount of medicine must be reduced by more than 30%, otherwise the crops will suffer from pesticide damage.”
Secondly, new agricultural business entities have substantial capital and a sufficient number of spraying drones, allowing them to complete plant protection tasks efficiently.
According to Blue Sky Dream, as of 2021, the company owned over 300 drones. A single drone can cover 500–800 mu in one day (calculated at 6–8 hours), with annual service coverage exceeding 700,000 mu.
In fact, the efficiency of drone spraying is predicated on substantial project subsidies. Under the project-based framework, drone companies receive special government subsidies to purchase drones and other plant protection equipment, while farmers enjoy certain agricultural subsidies when purchasing technical services.
Taking the 2020 Jixian wheat “One Spray, Three Protections” project as an example, according to the fund allocation requirements, farmers participating in the project could obtain drone spraying services at a price of 8 yuan/mu, with the remaining 10 yuan subsidised by the government. Without this subsidy, farmers would have to bear a cost of at least 18 yuan/mu.
III. What has drone spraying brought to farmers?
Smallholders with fragmented plots have relatively staggered spraying schedules—perhaps the Zhang family sprays today and the Wang family tomorrow—and their fields are often scattered in small patches. Although farmers are willing to pay operators to help spray pesticides, in reality, Blue Sky Dream is not particularly keen to do so.
During the investigation, operators expressed their frustration: “With a tiny plot of land, you have to turn before you’ve even started flying; the plane has to come down just as it goes up. It’s hard to precisely control the amount of medicine and water used”. Left with no choice, farmers have to coordinate with several other neighbours who also need spraying and agree to call the operator to come and do them all at once.
During periods of peak demand, Blue Sky Dream prioritises providing technical services to large-scale farmers. Smallholders are forced to queue and often only receive the service after the optimal agricultural window has passed, potentially leading to the same scenario described at the beginning of this article.
In 2019, while providing services to smallholders, an incident occurred where winter aphids spreading from nearby vegetable greenhouses affected wheat crops. This meant the pre-set dosage was insufficient, and the operator had to return for a second spray.
For thousands of years, agricultural development and production in Chinese society were built upon a model of smallholder family farming, where farmers mastered specific agricultural skills and practical experience, worked hard, and reaped the harvest. But with the advent of plant protection drones, the farmers’ original skills have become obsolete.
Furthermore, plant protection drones are highly specialised, difficult to operate, carry potential hazards, and function in complex, ever-changing environments. These high barriers to entry make it impossible for ordinary, untrained farmers to operate drones, leaving them with no choice but to purchase spraying services.
In the past, farmers would exchange labour and occasionally seek plant protection help from agricultural retailers, forming close-knit relationships based on mutual acquaintance. Now, everyone relies on drone spraying; a single phone call brings the operator, who leaves as soon as the job is done and the bill is paid.
In Jixian, there are still more than 21,000 smallholders engaged in agricultural production. How to resolve the dilemma of technical application for these farmers, how to achieve better alignment between smallholders and technical services through cooperation and organisation, and how to ensure smallholders truly master agricultural knowledge and technology should all be critical points for policy consideration.
Editor: Ze En