After Drone Spraying, a “Silent Spring” for Jiangnan Silkworm Farmers

In March this year, a news story about pollinating bees in rapeseed fields being “accidentally harmed” by drones drew attention. But away from the spotlight, another insect that has coexisted with human civilisation for millennia – the domestic silkworm – is facing a quieter yet graver survival crisis.

The moment a drone takes flight, “all that rearing was for nothing” – silkworms are extraordinarily vulnerable to pesticides and their environment. Many “low-toxicity” pesticides, even biopesticides, are harmless to humans yet deadly to silkworms. Pesticide drift damage from drones has made matters even worse – poisoned silkworms fail to spin silk, produce thin-shelled cocoons, or end up dumped into the woods by the silkworm farmers.

When “efficiency” becomes the benchmark for agriculture, technology too is quietly transforming the ancient practice of silkworm rearing – once, a brick-and-tile factory in a Jiangnan water town would shut down during the silkworm-rearing season, but now, before spraying, no one notifies you anymore.

In this episode, we begin with a viral news story about “bees poisoned to death”, venture into the water towns of Jiangnan, and listen to a silkworm farmer who returned to the land fourteen years ago: how drone spraying has caused mass poisoning of mulberry silkworms, how the traditional mulberry-silkworm system is being squeezed, and the different future that industrialised silkworm rearing is bringing.

This episode’s guest, Yu Jiangang (Yugang), was born into a family that had reared silkworms for generations on the South Taihu Plain. As a child, he helped his family cut mulberry leaves and feed young silkworms – even the village cats were named after the seasons when silkworms grew. He later left home for university, took a job in Beijing, and threw himself into rural development, before choosing in 2011 to return to the land, attempting to rebuild the pastoral order of silkworm, rice, and people. More than a decade on, he is still trying to answer: today, can traditional agriculture still survive in the margins?

Between efficiency, ecology, and culture – what exactly are we losing? And are these changes truly irreversible? If you too care about this small yet important topic, please click to listen to this episode.

00:21 Why does a drone spraying incident that killed bees matter?

02:26 Starting from the South Taihu Lake basin – what was the old mulberry-fish pond ecological system?

04:43 Why did every household once rear silkworms, yet now only a few still persist?

08:28 From occasional incidents to the norm – why is this “pesticide drift damage” increasingly difficult to avoid?

12:47 Insurance covers only a third – silkworm rearers begin abandoning rearing in the second year

14:28 “East Mulberry, West Transfer” – can smallholder farmers make money?

19:16 Industrialised silkworm rearing: silkworms fed soybean feed, spinning silk year-round – is this 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 silkworm rearing has permeated the sense of time in the Jiangnan water towns?

31:58 One silk duvet – how much can silkworm farmers earn?

34:35 To stop silkworms from being poisoned again, Yugang rented 15 mu of rice paddies

39:42 Creating a protected area the way a zoo keeps tree frogs

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