In September, with grain fragrant and fields welcoming the harvest, the apple orchards of Yongxing Town in Li County, Gansu Province, see intelligent weeders moving between fruit trees and unmanned intelligent sprayers carrying out precise crop protection. Farm work that once relied on human labor now has more "machine helpers." This kind of change is happening in more and more villages.
Since 2024, China Samsung has partnered with the China Foundation for Rural Development to launch the "New Tech Farm Machinery Project," introducing unmanned and intelligent agricultural machinery into specialty agricultural production, while bringing talent cultivation and socialized service mechanisms to rural areas. Over three years, the project has covered 6 counties in 5 provinces, providing a total of 251 units of various agricultural machinery, training 1,418 new farmers, and making technology a new fulcrum for industrial transformation in many villages.
Starting from local pain points to make farm machinery truly usable
In the past, farming methods of "ox plowing and shoulder carrying" troubled generations of farmers. As the rural revitalization strategy enters a new stage, building a modern agricultural system has become an era-defining question. However, in some areas, shortcomings remain such as "insufficient modern farm machinery, weak socialized services, and small farmers scattered with low yields," with "lack of equipment, high costs, and low utilization rates" becoming roadblocks to increasing farmers' incomes.
China Samsung chose to cut in from specific "bottleneck points." The project adheres to a "one county, one blueprint" approach, configuring equipment based on local industrial characteristics. In Li County, the apple industry has long faced mechanization challenges brought by mountainous and hilly terrain. Rather than simply copying farm machinery from plain areas, China Samsung joined hands with the Nanjing Institute of Agricultural Mechanization under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs to customize intelligent rotary tillage and fertilization integrated machines, unmanned lawn mowers, and other equipment tailored to the actual needs of local dwarf and densely planted apple orchards. After 76 units of new farm machinery entered Li County, the project also organized a socialized farm machinery service team of about 12 people and built a comprehensive agricultural service center integrating machinery storage, training, and maintenance functions.
The "adapting to local conditions" approach has truly embedded a batch of advanced equipment into the production chain. Shulan County in Jilin has quality rice, so China Samsung helped configure a full set of intelligent farm machinery for plowing, planting, managing, and harvesting; Ruyang County in Henan vigorously grows sweet potatoes, so a sweet potato ridging, film-covering, drip-irrigation, and transplanting integrated machine was introduced; Yuzhong in Lanzhou is rich in Chinese medicinal herbs, so transplanting and digging equipment for herbs was brought in; in Foping, Shaanxi, cornel seed removal machines and color sorters were configured, ending the history of "hand-picking from bamboo baskets."
Today, technology-driven agricultural assistance has produced tangible results. The Li County project has benefited 1,054 apple-growing households and 4,293 people, reduced labor costs in agricultural production by 30%, and lowered costs by 720 yuan per mu. At the same time, it has trained more than 300 operators of various farm machines, driving nearby local employment. Zhang Jian, Deputy General Manager of China Samsung, stated: "The New Tech Farm Machinery Project aims to use new quality productive forces to revitalize specialty industries. By exploring innovative socialized service models, we cultivate professional service teams with strong management and technical skills for local areas, build standardized operations and production, and ultimately achieve cost reduction and efficiency improvement in assisted areas, enhancing farmers' income and happiness."
New machinery becomes an income growth engine
No matter how advanced the machines are, if no one knows how to use them or manage them, it is difficult to truly change agricultural production. To this end, the New Tech Farm Machinery Project breaks away from the short-term assistance approach of "giving someone a fish" and focuses on cultivating endogenous development momentum in rural areas. Through the trinity model of "new machinery assistance + new farmer cultivation + new business format cultivation," it truly brings advanced agricultural productivity "in and keeps it there," upgrading farm machinery from a "production tool" to an "income growth engine."
To revitalize rural areas, talent is the foundation and the key. With "new machinery," it is even more important to cultivate "new farmers" who possess both traditional farming experience and modern technological literacy. Through external training, certification for positions, and practical exercises, a group of local farmers and returning youth have begun to transform from traditional agricultural laborers into technical agricultural service practitioners such as machinery operators and aerial defense pilots. Up to now, the New Tech Farm Machinery Project has cumulatively trained 1,418 new farmers, helped local areas establish 8 specialized and professional service teams, and cultivated 70 professional operators.
At the same time, the project is also exploring a more critical question: after the machinery arrives, who will operate it, and how can it continue to create value? The exploration in Shuanghe Village, Shulan, Jilin provides a sample. In the past, local agricultural production was dominated by scattered small farmers, and machinery mainly served their own land. After the Samsung New Tech Farm Machinery Project was implemented, the village collective established a modern enterprise management structure and set up a farm machinery service company, forming a mechanism of "village and town supervision and control, cooperative resource coordination, and company market-oriented operations." Villagers can either become service team members or purchase agricultural services as needed, turning farm machinery from a "self-use tool" into an operating asset that can provide external services. In 2025, services covered 22 villages and 128 households, with agricultural service revenue exceeding 500,000 yuan. During spring plowing, 5,400 mu of farmland operations were completed in just half a month, comprehensive production costs were reduced by about 30%, and operational efficiency increased by more than 50%. Shuanghe Village Party Secretary You Shuangyin said: "Mechanization has solved the problem of who will farm the land. Villagers can hand their land to the cooperative, achieving full-process trusteeship from sowing and harvesting to sales, making farming more worry-free."
This is precisely a development logic that China Samsung continues to explore in the project: equipment is "hardware," talent is "software," and what truly enables rural areas to sustain revitalization is an operating mechanism capable of self-operation and self-sustaining blood flow.
Turning one-time assistance into sustained development capacity
Initially, when a new farm machine enters a village, it may solve a problem in only one production link. But when more and more equipment, talent, and service mechanisms are connected, what changes is no longer just "how to farm one mu of land," but the way rural industries organize production, allocate resources, and create value.
This is also the important significance of the project's adherence to "one county, one blueprint." Different regions have different industrial foundations and development conditions, and rural revitalization is hard to replicate with a completely identical plan. What can truly be "replicated" is the assistance approach that starts from industrial needs, is supported by technological equipment, takes local talent as the main body, and uses market-oriented services as the link.
Over three years, what the China Samsung New Tech Farm Machinery Project has explored is exactly such a path: from "giving resources" to "cultivating capabilities," and from "solving temporary difficulties" to "seeking long-term development." For rural areas, farm machinery and equipment can solve temporary production problems, but only when technology, talent, and service mechanisms truly take root can they become the real fulcrum for sustained industrial progress and continuous rural revitalization.