Futuristic village heralds new life for rural residents

Drones and 5G technology are among the innovations raising both crop yields and living standards. Li Lei reports from Jinhua, Zhejiang.

A plow trailing an unmanned tractor powered by 5G technology roared into life and began working a small parcel of land.

Hundreds of meters away, a humming drone lifted off into the air. To the cheers of a group of fifth graders visiting from a nearby school, it sprinkled a mist of fertilizer over a patch of rice crops.

Sensors embedded on the edge of the paddy fields collected a range of real-time data such as soil moisture, incidence of disease and pH levels. Later, the parameters were analyzed to see if human intervention was required.

These were the scenes on a recent workday in Cailu village, a futuristic rural community in hilly Zhejiang province. The once hollowed-out village — following an exodus of farmers as a result of the lack of economic opportunities — has slowly morphed into a poster child for the rural vitalization campaign and stepped-up efforts to curb urban-rural inequality.

The village is tucked away in the rolling mountains of Jinhua, a city of 7 million inhabitants that is known for its ham, smallware markets and the Hengdian World Studios, a sprawling filmmaking base dubbed "China's Hollywood" by the media. However, Cailu is less well-known as a front-runner in the promotion of next-generation farming techniques.

The push for labor-saving and data-intensive farming methods is part of a larger national effort to reform food production in light of the rapidly aging population and the greater demand for quality foodstuffs.