When Drone Spraying Does It All, Do We Still Need Small-Scale Farmers?
As global warming intensifies, fall armyworm infestations have become a new risk to global agricultural production. In the summer of 2019, when we were conducting fieldwork in Ji County (pseudonym) on the North China Plain, the arrival of the fall armyworm put the entire county on a “wartime footing”.
The fall armyworm, commonly abbreviated as “FAW” and also known as the “autumn armyworm”, is a major transboundary migratory pest designated for global early warning by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. It is characterised by long-distance migration and flight, strong reproductive capacity and severe crop damage, and primarily affects maize, sorghum and other crops.
At the time, the summer-sown maize on the North China Plain was at the tasselling and silking stage, the critical phase that determines yield. Pest damage at this point would severely affect output, so timely pest control was of the essence. Upon detecting traces of the fall armyworm, Ji County immediately established a “Fall Armyworm Monitoring, Early Warning and Control Leading Group” and dispatched plant protection drones for fall armyworm control.
However, Ji County’s farmers were deeply anxious about their inability to obtain drone-based pest control (hereafter “drone spraying”) services in a timely manner. The number of plant protection drones was limited and could not meet the pest control needs of all farmers in a short timeframe, while farmers had no say in the order of treatment and could only wait anxiously, like ants on a hot pan.
I. From Mastery to Detachment: Farmers’ Relationship with Technology
During this period, agricultural technicians went down to the countryside to guide and teach advanced farming techniques. Farmers in Ji County not only benefited from the public-interest agricultural services provided by the state and government but also acquired more scientific grain-cultivation and plant protection methods.
One villager told us: ‘Back then, seeds, fertilisers and pesticides were all allocated by the government. The village agricultural team leader and technicians taught us how to use them, how much to apply, and what the benefits were – they explained everything clearly to us.’
During this period, the government promoted high-quality, efficient agricultural inputs – phosphate fertiliser, nitrogen–phosphorus compound fertiliser and the like – along with agricultural techniques such as crop transplanting and wheat rust control, all of which farmers applied directly in their production. Large farm machinery, including tractors from Poland and Czechoslovakia, entered the daily lives of Ji County’s farmers. Under hands-on instruction from agricultural technicians, farmers mastered the relevant operations, greatly increasing grain yields.
After Reform and Opening Up in 1978, agricultural technology extension entered a market-oriented period, with agricultural input retailers driving the spread of advanced techniques into rural areas through paid services. As the market economy developed, many agricultural technicians “ventured into business”, setting up shops in market towns as agricultural input retailers. This grassroots market took on the vital role of disseminating agricultural technology.
For local farmers, agricultural input retailers were familiar neighbours who had built close, acquaintance-based relationships over years of regular interaction. These retailers were either former agricultural technicians or practitioners well versed in farming knowledge, and were greatly favoured by farmers.
Ji County’s farmers frequently visited agricultural input shops to purchase seeds, pesticides and fertilisers. Some even pulled diseased crops from their own fields and brought them to the retailers for an on-the-spot “diagnosis”, so that the right “medicine” could be prescribed.
These new-type agricultural business entities have invested substantial capital, command advanced agricultural technology, and operate with a mechanisation rate as high as 100%. At this stage, farmers are no longer the recipients of agricultural technology extension or practitioners of the technology; they need only make a phone call to access the relevant services: ‘All we do is pay up. What pesticides they use and how much they put on – it doesn’t matter to us, as long as it works.’
It is precisely this evolution in the model of agricultural technology extension that has given rise to the technology adoption difficulties experienced by Ji County’s farmers, as described at the beginning of this article.
II. Must Farmers Still Master Technology to Farm?
In our fieldwork, we found that an increasing number of technology extension programmes in Ji County are being “bundled” and awarded to a single agricultural technology company – Lantianmeng Agricultural Technology Co., Ltd. (pseudonym, hereafter “Lantianmeng”). Between 2014 and 2019, Lantianmeng successively took on more than a dozen professionalised unified prevention-and-control programmes, including the winter wheat ‘one-spray-three-protections‘ programme and the “one-spray, multi-effect” programme for mid-to-late-stage maize.
For various reasons, promoting technology directly to individual farmers has become increasingly impractical.
First, small-scale farmers who farm independently have their own production habits and ideas, making it difficult to meet the requirements of new technology promotion.
Take plant protection technology programmes as an example: to meet green pest control targets, the government has stipulated the use of ‘low-toxicity, high-efficacy pesticides’ and a goal of “reducing pesticide use by 6% over three years”. But farmers need affordable pesticides with strong efficacy, and low-toxicity pesticides “act slowly and are expensive”, so “for ordinary people, it’s better to just buy the highly toxic kind – the bugs die almost immediately”.
By contrast, Lantianmeng claims that the pesticides used in drone operations meet government-guided standards, and that switching to drone spraying naturally reduces pesticide usage: ‘When using a drone to apply herbicide, the dosage must be reduced by at least 30%; otherwise the crops will suffer from pesticide phytotoxicity.’
Second, new-type agricultural business entities have ample capital and sufficient numbers of drone spraying aircraft, enabling them to carry out plant protection work with high efficiency.
According to Lantianmeng, by 2021 the company owned more than 300 drones. A single drone can cover 500–800 mu (approximately 33–53 hectares) per working day (calculated at 6–8 hours), and the company’s annual service coverage exceeds 700,000 mu (approximately 47,000 hectares).
In reality, the high efficiency of drone spraying is predicated on substantial programme subsidies. Under the project-based governance framework, drone spraying companies receive government special subsidy funds for purchasing plant protection equipment such as drones, and farmers purchasing technology services also enjoy a certain agricultural support subsidy.
Using the 2020 Ji County wheat ‘one-spray-three-protections’ programme as an example, under the programme funding allocation requirements, participating farmers can receive drone spraying services at a rate of ¥8 per mu, with the remaining ¥10 subsidised by the government. Without this subsidy, farmers would bear a cost of at least ¥18 per mu.
III. What Has Drone Spraying Brought to Farmers?
Small-scale farmers who farm independently tend to need spraying at different, scattered times – the Zhang family may need it today, the Wang family tomorrow, and their plots are often a small patch here and another over there. Although farmers are willing to pay drone operators to spray their crops, in practice Lantianmeng is not very eager to help.
During the survey, drone operators also expressed their frustration to us: ‘A tiny plot – before you’ve even started flying, you’ve got to make a turn; the drone goes up and should come straight back down; it’s impossible to precisely control the amount of pesticide or water.’ Left with no choice, farmers have to pool their pesticide needs with several neighbouring households and agree to call a drone operator over to spray all their plots at once.
If spraying demand is heavily concentrated at a particular time, Lantianmeng will prioritise providing technology services to large-scale growers, and small-scale farmers are left queuing – often past the critical farming period – before they can access the service, very likely leading to the same scenario described at the start of this article.
In 2019, when drone operators provided drone spraying services to small-scale farmers, an incident occurred in which wheat affected by overwintering aphids spreading from nearby vegetable polytunnels meant the originally set dosage proved insufficient, forcing a return trip and a repeat spray.
For millennia, agricultural development and farming production in Chinese society have been built on the model of small-scale household farming, with farmers mastering specific agricultural skills and fieldwork experience, working the land diligently and reaping their harvests. But with the advent of plant protection drones, farmers’ traditional plant protection skills have been rendered obsolete.
Moreover, plant protection drones are highly specialised, difficult to operate, carry multiple potential hazards, and function in complex and ever-changing operating environments. These high barriers mean that ordinary farmers without training simply cannot operate a drone and therefore have no option but to purchase drone spraying services.
In the past, farmers would swap labour with one another and would frequently seek plant protection help from agricultural input retailers, forging close, familiar bonds within the community. Now, with all spraying done by drone, a single phone call brings the operators; they spray, collect payment and leave.
In Ji County, more than 21,000 small-scale farmers are still engaged in agricultural production. How to eliminate farmers’ difficulties in adopting technology, how to achieve a better fit between small-scale farmers and technology services through farmer cooperation and organisation, and how to enable small farmers to truly master agricultural knowledge and technology, should all become important points for policy reflection.
Edited by: Ze’en