As the spring farming season enters its most important stage, a family farm in Hai'an is turning to intelligent agricultural technology to ramp up efficiency and reduce labor demands.

At the Yuwan Family Farm, an unmanned crop protection drone was seen flying steadily over more than 1,000 mu (about 67 hectares) of lush green wheat along a preset route on March 24, spraying a fine mist evenly across the wheat to carry out precise pest and disease control.

Manager Yu Qingrong said the farm has partnered with Jiangsu Sinan Beidou Navigation Technology to upgrade its agricultural machinery with intelligent systems.

According to the company's technical staff, the system allows the farm to remotely start and stop equipment, plan routes and set work standards. Once tasks are assigned through the remote platform, unmanned equipment can automatically complete the full workflow.

Yu currently grows 1,500 mu of wheat. With three unmanned crop protection drones operating at the same time, the farm is expected to complete all pest and disease prevention work within just two days.

Compared with traditional manual operations, this approach not only saves significant labor costs but also improves the level of efficiency more than three-fold.

The owners invested more than 3 million yuan ($434,000) last year to establish Hai'an's first unmanned family farm. Equipped with field sensors it can monitor the weather, soil moisture, pest conditions and crop growth in real time, enabling more precise and efficient management throughout the entire rice and wheat production cycle.