Intrepid drone operators turn skills to good account

A cooperative of 54 women is helping farmers in Hubei province and beyond, and at the same time improving members' lives

Yao Lili always wears a hat when she operates a drone that sprays pesticides on her farmland in summer in Tianmen, Hubei province.

Standing on the edge of the land, Yao, 39, dexterously operates the drone while closely watching where it is heading.

"This drone can be of immense help to farmers, quickly completing the task of spraying pesticides," says Yao, wearing a tan that comes by dint of working long hours in the sun.

Yao, a mother of two, is one of 54 drone operators who belong to a service cooperative that another villager in Tianmen, Jiang Minglan, set up. Yao's family now owns two drones, she says. Her husband Xiang Qubo runs a small butcher's shop in her village.

In addition to using drones to help local farmers spray pesticides, drone operators in the cooperative have traveled to Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, Henan province, and other places to spray pesticides for local farmers in recent months.

Jiang, who started her business after graduating from Wuhan Textile University in 2003, used to work in the agricultural industry outside her hometown.

She returned to Tianmen in 2015 and focused on promoting new and green plant protection technologies.

Two years later she was a pioneer in Tianmen in using drones to help spray pesticides and do related farm work.