Longjing’s Drone Air Taxi
Longjing drones taxi tea
CHINA
Drones are sure to become as essential to the tea farmer as smartphones within the next two years. The latest example of innovation is emblematic of a new era of fusing the best of the old heritage of tea with technology that adds to it instead of automating it in ways that reduce character and quality.
This is the air taxi equivalent that picks up freshly harvested leaves from mountain elevations and delivers them to the tea processing center within two minutes, instead of an hour. The leaves are undamaged and just off the bush.
What makes this emblematic is that the tea is Dragonwell and the tea gardens are in Longjing. Dragonwell, one of China’s famous 10 teas, is grown and processed via the very best of artisan methods that date back 1,200 years at least, on terroir that has been well protected. The very best is not exported for general sale. The rarest imperial grade leaf is plucked up on Lion’s Peak only on the first of the 10 days of the pre-Qingming festival, just before the seasonal spring rains begin. The drones preserve quality and improve costs and productivity – heritage plus technology.
Drones are, like smartphones, general purpose tools that provide fast and quantifiable payoff at low cost. That makes them today’s innovation and tomorrow’s necessity. Proven applications include:
• Spraying: water savings of up to 90%, chemicals reduced 30-50%.
• Weeding: labor savings amounting to a factor of 10 and up, 5 times faster than tractor application of pesticides
• Planting: decrease in costs of 85%.
• Infra-red plant diagnostics: signs of plant stress are apparent through sensors ten days before the physical damage is visible.
• Satellite and aircraft imaging: halving of costs for farms smaller than 20 hectares.
Drone prices and capabilities range widely. The ones used here are basic and reliable, with a limited carrying capacity of up to 15 kilograms, and no cameras or communications equipment. Prices for such drones that handle core functions of aerial surveys, light spraying, crop monitoring, tracking of water levels, weed growth, etc., are as low as $1,800. Ones with multi-device and extra payload capabilities are in the $15,000 range. Operating costs are low. Maintenance, training, and other costs add up for the more complex systems and can be as high as 25% of the capital costs per annum.
But the Longjing tea limo is inexpensive and effective. And, far from being “technology,” it is really a “natural” extension of the best bio-management and artisanal production.