On December 11, 2024, Zigui County, Yichang City, Hubei Province, welcomed a media exchange event held by DJI Agriculture. The event was themed "Twelve Years of Leap, Agricultural Innovation under the Low-Altitude Economy", and attracted many guests from the government, industry experts, and national mainstream media to witness the value contribution of agricultural drones to the industry and society in the era of low-altitude economy. At the same time, in a mountainous scene with Zigui as a typical example, DJI Agriculture's latest flagship product T100 completed its first show after the new product launch, and demonstrated its advanced and intelligent product power at the event, refreshing the media's new understanding of China's agricultural drones.

At the beginning of the event, Li Bo, deputy secretary of the Zigui County Party Committee, gave a warm welcome to the guests. He said that as the "hometown of citrus", Zigui's citrus industry has become a pillar industry for local farmers to get rid of poverty and become rich. Agricultural drones, as a new type of productivity for local agricultural development, promote the comprehensive mechanization of citrus management from plant protection to harvesting. The application of agricultural drones can not only solve the spraying problem of complex local terrain, but also effectively improve the efficiency of citrus transportation and operation safety, injecting new impetus into the upgrading of local industries.

Yin Shijun, Vice President of the Chinese Society of Aeronautics and Astronautics and former Chief Engineer of the Civil Aviation Administration of China, shared the current status and future of the low-altitude economy, envisioned the broad prospects of the low-altitude economy, and proposed that agricultural drones are an important force in promoting agricultural innovation and the development of the low-altitude economy. Yin Shijun mentioned, "China's unmanned aerial vehicle technology is currently in a relatively leading position in the world. At the same time, China is a major agricultural country. Agricultural drones not only upgrade China's agricultural mechanization, but also are the forerunners of the development of the low-altitude economy. Agricultural drones are the most mature field in the low-altitude economy. Applying advanced technology to agriculture will bring new vitality to traditional agriculture."

At the meeting, Shen Xiaojun, head of DJI's global agricultural market, comprehensively analyzed the development and actual application cases of agricultural drones in the past 12 years from the three dimensions of land, users and economic value, and compared multiple sets of data. It explains how DJI Agriculture has achieved multiple "0 to 1" constructions for the industry over the past decade, from product technology to service support, as well as policy support and development related to agricultural machinery, thereby promoting changes in farmers' production methods. Shen Xiaojun said that technology not only brings about an increase in farmers’ income, but more importantly, it improves their identity and reflects their values.

Behind the large-scale application of agricultural drones is the construction of multiple "0-1"

“Since DJI first applied its leading drone technology to agriculture in 2012, the agricultural drone industry has seen an unprecedented leap forward,” Shen Xiaojun said at the event. In the past twelve years, DJI Agriculture has started from single plant protection operations and gradually expanded to multi-scenario applications such as sowing, lifting, and aerial protection of fruit trees, achieving comprehensive coverage of drone technology in agricultural production scenarios.
Data shows that as of October 2024, DJI's agricultural drones have covered 38% of the country's arable land, and the overall penetration rate in the cultivation of food crops such as rice and wheat has reached 40%. Agricultural drones can be used throughout the entire process, from sowing and fertilizing to plant protection, and are used approximately 4-10 times a year. In parts of Xinjiang, Heilongjiang, Jiangsu, and other regions, 95% of crops are being harvested using agricultural drones throughout the entire process. Plant protection management. In addition, the total area of ​​fruit tree protection has reached 300 million mu.
The large-scale application of agricultural drones has also promoted the rapid development of the aerial defense service industry. By 2024, DJI's agricultural drone operations will reach 2.5 billion mu, involving 200,000 units and nearly 500,000 people engaged in aerial spraying services. According to a rough estimate based on the unit price of 5 yuan per mu, the operating area of ​​2.5 billion mu can create an aerial spraying market size of about 12.5 billion yuan. This scale does not yet include the potential of drones in emerging fields such as fisheries, forestry, and animal husbandry. "In Zigui alone, there are more than 1,000 pilots this year, creating hundreds of millions of yuan in output value for the local area," Shen Xiaojun mentioned at the event.
In addition to domestic development, agricultural drones have also become a business card for China's overseas expansion. Since 2016, DJI introduced agricultural drones to Japan, and they have now been used in more than 100 countries and regions.
The large-scale application of the industry is inseparable from technology, services and policy support. For twelve years, DJI Agriculture has always used technological innovation as its core driving force, continuously optimizing its products around the goals of "cost reduction, safety, and reliability." With a deeper understanding of the industry and user needs, DJI has also built a user service system covering the entire life cycle from training, after-sales to maintenance support. DJI Huifei's subsidiary has trained more than 300,000 students in total, and has provided a large number of professional pilot talents to the industry through more than 1,000 training points across the country. DJI has currently established more than 1,100 after-sales outlets across the country, and 4 spare parts distribution centers in Northwest, Northeast, Central China, and South China, ensuring that 98% of repair cases can be completed within 6 hours, solving the problem of timeliness in agricultural operations. .
Shen Xiaojun finally said, "The development of the industry is inseparable from the support of policies. Looking back over the past 12 years, the policy's regulation and support for this industry has also promoted the progress of the entire agricultural drone industry." Since the document clearly proposed to "strengthen agricultural aviation construction", the country has experienced standard promotion from industry to ministry and then to national level in terms of agricultural machinery product performance and quality standards, and laid the foundation for the internationalization of China's plant protection UAV technical standards. At the same time, the agricultural machinery purchase subsidy policy has significantly increased the popularity of agricultural drones in just seven years, from the pilot program in 2017 to full coverage in 2024. According to statistics from the national agricultural machinery purchase subsidy system, a total of 35,631 plant protection drones were subsidized in the national agricultural machinery subsidies in 2023, of which DJI accounted for 80.54%. In addition, the Interim Regulations on the Flight Management of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, which came into effect on January 1 this year, made separate provisions for the scope and license requirements of agricultural drones, further lowering the threshold for operators and injecting new pressures into the development of the industry. A new impetus.

DJI T100 debut: Wings of technology soaring over the Three Gorges

During the outdoor demonstration session of the event, DJI's latest flagship product T100 made its first public appearance, demonstrating the application scenarios of fruit lifting and pesticide spraying.
Zigui is located on both sides of the Xiling Gorge of the Yangtze River. The county has a navel orange planting area of ​​400,000 mu and is a famous navel orange hometown. However, the undulating hills have long restricted the popularization of mechanization, and fruit farmers have to rely on manpower to carry the harvested navel oranges down the steep slopes. The "orange carriers" with an average age of 45 to 65 years old have to walk 2-3 kilometers on a steep slope of more than 20 degrees to carry 120 kilograms of oranges. This traditional method is not only inefficient, but also has safety hazards.

During the lifting process, DJI T100 won the praise of the guests with its excellent performance. With its strong load-bearing capacity, DJI T100 completed the lifting task of 85 kg of oranges in less than two minutes, which is dozens of times faster than manual labor.

In the subsequent spraying demonstration, DJI T100 once again demonstrated its excellent performance. With a large flow rate of 40 liters/minute, DJI T100 achieves full coverage of fruit tree leaves with liquid medicine, and the rear four nozzles ensure that the back of the leaves evenly absorb the liquid medicine. In addition, DJI T100 is the first to be equipped with AI and AR functions. Through its newly equipped laser radar and phased array radar, it achieves omnidirectional perception and accurate obstacle recognition, ensuring safe flight in complex mountainous environments.

Leading the future: Low-altitude economy promotes the new development of agricultural drones

In 2024, low-altitude economy was written into the government work report for the first time, becoming a new strategic choice to promote industrial upgrading, technological progress, and create new growth engines. Drones are one of the main carriers of low-altitude economic applications. Among many drone industry applications, China's agricultural drone development is the most large-scale.
As early as 2012, DJI applied leading drone technology to the agricultural field, providing agricultural practitioners with digital, precise and intelligent management solutions. In 2015, DJI officially established the DJI Agriculture Division and launched the MG-1 plant protection drone. After twelve years of development, agricultural drones have evolved from their initial plant protection functions to today's multifunctional operations such as sowing, fertilizing, and lifting, and have fully penetrated into all areas of "agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry, and fishery", promoting the integrated development of agricultural modernization and the low-altitude economy.

Agriculture is both the oldest industry and the field with the most technological potential. With the further integration of technologies such as AI and AR, the application scenarios of drones in agriculture will become more diversified and intelligent, just as DJI Agriculture's vision is to "make agriculture easier and make life better." In the future, with the continuous development of the low-altitude economy, agricultural drones will release more potential in terms of resource optimization and industrial chain extension. As an industry leader, DJI Agriculture will further promote the deep integration of the low-altitude economy and the agricultural field, and through technological breakthroughs and ecological collaboration, provide more efficient, safe and intelligent solutions for global agricultural production, injecting more vitality into the development of the low-altitude economy.