In Guangxi's Qinzhou City, spring sees lychee trees sprouting new buds as drones weave through the orchards, completing precise plant protection tasks with a sweep of their rotors. The days of fruit farmers carrying buckets up slopes or pilots scrambling to find work are now a thing of the past. Farmers using the "Guiniao Xianfei" platform, a DiDi-like service for pesticide application created by Chen Huang's team, can simply place an order via their mobile phones to summon professional drone operators for plant protection services.
Lingshan County, known as the "Hometown of Chinese Lychees," is where Chen Huang, a graduate of the Guangxi University Business School, returned in 2018 to form a team engaged in lychee e-commerce. As his lychee business flourished, he began leasing orchards and became a grower himself, venturing into drone-based "aerial defense" operations. This experience revealed a significant market need: during farming seasons, many fruit growers required plant protection services like fertilization and pesticide application, but qualified drone pilots were hard to find. Spotting this business opportunity, Chen conceived the idea of an online platform to precisely match fruit growers with pilots.
By the end of 2024, the "Guiniao Xianfei" project was initiated, officially launching in November 2025. This agricultural version of the DiDi service model began to take root. "To create a platform that farmers will use and love, we must be grounded in the soil," Chen explained. He led his team to develop a WeChat mini-program tailored to farmers' habits, eliminating cumbersome steps like downloading apps, registration, and card binding. The interface features only prominent buttons for "Pesticide Application" and "Transportation," allowing farmers to place an order in just three steps: entering their address, crop type, and acreage.
To alleviate farmers' concerns, Chen introduced a "pay only after satisfaction" service and established a "village committee ordering" system for elderly farmers. Service points were set up in various villages, building trust through offline word-of-mouth. The initial order rate was a mere 7%, but it has now surpassed 90%.
Guan Zhibin, a lychee grower, was among the platform's earliest users. Recalling his past struggles to find pilots, Guan said that during busy seasons, he had to contact pilots one by one, once reaching out to seven people in a single day without success, resulting in significant losses due to missed pest control opportunities. "Tasks that previously required five workers laboring for three days can now be completed by a drone in just four hours, with the added ability to operate at night for better control results," Guan noted. He added that the platform now enables quick pilot matching, and using drones to transport lychees to loading points in under an hour has reduced the rate of spoiled fruit by at least 40%.
The convenience of the digital platform benefits farmers and also creates new professional opportunities for rural pilots. Qin Zhixin, a pilot born after 2000, shared that before joining the "Guiniao Xianfei" platform, he relied on short videos and WeChat moments to find customers, resulting in scattered, long-distance orders that often required commutes of tens of kilometers. Through the platform, orders are reasonably assigned, and it provides pesticide usage and operational plans. Complex issues are handled by platform support, allowing pilots to focus solely on their work, saving time and effort.
To adapt the platform to hilly terrain and the lychee industry, Chen's team implemented three adaptation rules: "same crop priority," "smart order pooling," and "farming season priority." This allows scattered orders from the same hillside to be automatically merged, reducing pilots' empty travel rate by 40% and prioritizing orders during critical periods like lychee shoot control and fruit preservation.
For pilot management, the platform introduced a "zero threshold" drone leasing model, where leasing costs are deducted from order income. Coupled with professional training, this enables local farmers to easily become "certified pilots" and find employment close to home.
Today, the "Guiniao Xianfei" platform's services cover various scenarios including plant protection spraying, seed and fertilizer broadcasting, and material transportation. It boasts over a hundred active pilots serving more than a thousand farming households.
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