High in Chongqing’s Daqiao Village, where steep trails and labor shortages once trapped rich stands of bamboo, villagers have found a lighter way out: drones. Harnessing the “wings” of the low-altitude economy, farm drones now hoist cut bamboo from ravines and drop it neatly by the roadside — a trip that used to be a back-breaking, hours-long ordeal is now done in about a minute.

The pilot is a local villager who purchased a drone and earned an operator certificate. Farmers still fell the bamboo by hand, but the drone handles the heavy lifting. That cut the all-in transport cost from over $41 per tonne to roughly $34, increasing efficiency by ten to twenty times.

For a village that once had to watch its “green treasure” sit idle, the sky has quite literally opened a new market.