You Name the Drone, They’ll Build It

As dawn broke on China’s southern Hainan Island, Yang Daozhu clambered up a metal stepladder for a better view over the cornfields, remote control in hand. Wearing a blue surgical mask and rubber boots, the 30-year-old was soon steering a 120-pound DJI drone back and forth above the yellow-tipped stalks, flipping a switch to spray them with a mist of pesticide. About 100 feet away, a co-worker did the same from the ground, occasionally climbing onto a blue truck. By noon they’d covered the same stretch of field it would have taken four or five workers a week to spray with traditional crank-operated backpack dispensers.

This is a typical day for Hainan China Agriculture and Flight Service, a year-old company with about 50 employees that’s sprung up to fill a niche. “It’s harder to find people to spray pesticides in the old way,” says Zhang Yourong, the farmer who manages these cornfields. “Young people want to leave the farms and find better jobs in cities now.” Yang’s boss, former realtor Liang Lvsheng, says he’s also interested in using drones to map farms from the sky, a way to spot pests or other problems more quickly.