Unmanned machines boost China's rice production

The village in the city of Jinhua is home to about 80 hectares of highly mechanized fields of hybrid rice, whose output exceeds 15 metric tons a year per hectare, Xu said.

To build such facilities, the village authorities have rented farmlands from farmers in an arrangement known as "land transfer" and invested more than 10 million yuan ($1.4 million) to equip them with tech-filled machines.

However, Xu said the village's embrace of such cutting-edge technologies is not cost effective, at least for now.