A record of a post-2000s young woman studying agriculture: “We can operate this big machine well too”
FoodThink Says
Tomorrow is International Women’s Day, and we recommend this article by Wu Ting, a young woman born after 2000. She is from Anhui and grew up watching her elders toil for the land. Amid the broader trend of agricultural mechanization, Wu Ting’s father also bought a harvester and became an agricultural machinery operator, supporting the family by providing farm machinery services. Out of interest, after recently returning to her hometown, Wu Ting took part in an agricultural machinery training course.
Through this training, she not only observed the urgent need among older-generation agricultural machinery operators to update their skills and keep pace with the times, but also keenly captured the constraints faced by women in the world of agriculture. What follows is Wu Ting’s record of and reflections on gender bias in the agricultural world.
I. Becoming a Farm Machinery Operator
Most agricultural machinery operators today are freelancers, generally people who don’t want to work for others but still want to make money. When the rush harvest ends in northern Anhui, many operators form small groups of three or five and head elsewhere, as near as Shanghai and as far as Jiangxi or even Guangxi.
Being an agricultural machinery operator is how the older generation in my family made a living. In 2009, my dad entered the industry as a combine harvester operator. When I was little, I often felt reluctant to see my parents leave home.
Their work also taught me that life is not easy. One year, my parents went out for the rush harvest, and summer temperatures often soared above 40 degrees Celsius. During that month, they frequently suffered heatstroke. By the time they came home, both of them were clearly different from before, looking much more worn out. I only came to understand those hardships later.
Accidents can happen too. One machinery operator they knew was harvesting rice when his vehicle tipped into a ditch, and the harvester pinned him underneath. After his death, the burden of supporting the family fell to his wife and children, and the child was forced to drop out of school.
Compared with agricultural machinery operators, my previous workplace experience really could be considered “comfortable”—no exposure to wind or sun, no heavy physical labor on the land, and not nearly as exhausting. But the money from that “decent” job was only enough to support myself, and staying in a cramped office space all day could also be mentally stifling.
Agricultural machinery operators, on the other hand, work for themselves, earn more, and get a greater sense of accomplishment from their jobs: they stand on their machines facing golden crops, filled with the joy of harvest. But it is also a harder way to make a living, one that even comes with risks.
The forms of labor across the two generations are different, and so are their hardships, but neither is easy.
II. The Fear Among Female Trainees
I also noticed that there were very few female trainees in the program. In our cohort of 50 trainees, only 7 were women, and most of the participants were older male agricultural machinery operators who had driven tractors before. Most of them were in their forties or fifties, people from the three districts and five counties of Fuyang who were engaged in agricultural production while also working as machinery operators. The tractor was an “old companion” that had been with them for many years, but they had almost no experience operating drones. They came here to learn this new drone skill in addition to working with their “old companion,” so it would be easier to spray pesticides on their own land and also earn some extra money by spraying for others.
The training course was organized by the Fuyang Branch of the Anhui Provincial Central Agricultural Broadcasting and Television School, though everyone was used to calling it the “Agricultural Broadcasting School.”
With this free agricultural machinery training provided by the government, these trainees—who had already accumulated considerable production experience—could at least first get a sense of how these newly emerging agricultural machines and devices worked, so they would not be taken advantage of in shops just because they were unfamiliar with the trade.
Compared with the experienced male trainees, the female trainees were much more hesitant when facing the tractors. Just as the stigma against “female drivers” still circulates today, similar prejudice is present in the matter of agricultural machinery too, and many people unconsciously place it in “a man’s world.”
In practical class, before I and the other female trainees had even gotten started, we were already hesitating. Looking at the old graves not far away in the field, then at the four tractors lined up in front of us, everyone showed signs of fear, worried that if we drove badly and accidentally crashed into them, we would damage someone else’s ancestral graves. The safety officer quickly reassured us: “Just put it in first gear and go slowly. There’s a safety officer on the vehicle too.”
But the atmosphere of insecurity still spread. “The men still drive better. They have experience. We’re still not quite there,” one older female trainee said.
I was a little unconvinced and raised my hand to indicate that I wanted to drive next. Then I stepped over the dirt ditch in front of the field and strode toward the tractor.
But irritation aside, at first I didn’t even know how to open the tractor cab door. After I got in, the safety officer sat to my left and explained the steps to me one by one: first turn the key to the ignition position; on the left side of the steering wheel is the forward-reverse gear, push it up to go forward and press it down to reverse; to shift gears, first push the gear lever to the front left, then move it right into first gear. After that, he pointed out the brake, accelerator, and clutch pedals to me.I was so nervous that my mind went blank. A few words would go in and then immediately slip out again, and my palms started sweating too. By the time I finally slowly got going, the tractor being driven by the trainee next to me suddenly came straight at me. I instinctively slammed on the brake. Only after that scare did I finally completely distinguish the positions of the brake, accelerator, and clutch.
When I reached the end of the field, it was time to turn around. I sat in the driver’s seat, with open land in front of me. The wheat in the field beside me had just begun to sprout, and the roar of the machine rang in my ears. Only then did I realize that my palms were already covered in sweat. Luckily I was wearing gloves, so the steering wheel wouldn’t slip.
I forced myself not to lose focus, gripping the steering wheel tightly with both hands, keeping my eyes fixed forward, and going over the steps the safety officer had just explained again and again in my head. Finally, when I successfully turned around, I let out a big breath without realizing it, and the sweat in my palms gradually subsided.
III. We can drive this big machine well too
At first, many of the male trainees didn’t drive it well, which made me even less confident. I kept calculating in my head: should I drive it or not? I even thought about discouraging others: “It’s too hard, forget it, don’t flip it over. It’s such a huge machine—if it really overturned, we couldn’t afford to pay for it.”
The female trainees training with me chimed in too: “Even those old farm machinery hands can’t drive it well. So many men, and only a few even dare to get on.” Another female trainee added, “This kind of thing was meant for men to drive in the first place. If even they can’t do it, then we definitely can’t. Women can’t drive harvesters well.”
Actually, the younger female trainees were somewhat unconvinced, but it wasn’t easy to directly argue back on the spot. Later, one male trainee nearly drove the harvester onto the curb, and the cutting platform almost knocked over a tree.
That made our hesitation even heavier. The older sister beside me said in a low voice, “This harvester isn’t even especially big, so logically it shouldn’t be that hard. But I’m just scared—I don’t feel sure of myself… and yet I still want to try.”
She was a few years older than me, not yet thirty. Before coming, her family had actually supported her learning. “My father-in-law said that if I learn it, then when the family buys a harvester, I can drive it and harvest rice for the family.”
Later, a teacher from the agricultural broadcasting school asked, “Are there any female trainees who want to come up and give it a try?” Everyone nudged each other and deferred, and no one spoke first. She hesitated for a moment, then suddenly stepped forward and, before another male trainee could, got into the harvester cab first.
The safety officer first taught her how to start it and move the levers. Very soon, the harvester slowly started moving under her hands, and the body of the machine was astonishingly steady.
I heard one older woman exclaim, “So a harvester doesn’t have to sway like that. Seeing those men driving it so shakily just now, I thought that was simply how it was supposed to be.”
During all this, I kept helping her record video. Watching her drive so steadily, backing into the parking spot without crossing the line, and keeping plenty of distance from both the curb and the roadside trees, I suddenly gained a bit of confidence: maybe I could drive it well too.
So the idea in our minds that “only men can drive this” wasn’t actually because of any innate difference. Within this default assumption, women are more likely to deny themselves and other women too: the less we dare to try, the more it seems to prove that “sure enough, we can’t do it,” and the stereotype keeps circulating like this.
When it was my turn, there was still a small mishap. After I got into the cab and the door shut, my mind suddenly went blank, so I had to call the safety officer back again. The old machine wasn’t very obedient—when I used force on the lever, it jolted and shook in fits and starts. Sweat broke out all over my back, and when backing up I still crossed the line. But in the end, the vehicle returned to its original position, without hitting a tree or the curb.
Once there was a first, there was quickly a second, a third, a fourth. Almost all the female trainees went up and tried it, and that older woman from before did too. She drove a little shakily, but still completed it successfully. When she got off, her eyes were full of disbelief, and she said in surprise: “My legs were going weak sitting up there, but I never thought we could drive such a big thing well too!”
IV. Assessment
I instinctively slowed down and listened carefully. Sure enough, when I had just plowed that stretch of land, the tractor’s sound had been a bit muffled. I gently raised the control lever a little, listened again, and the sound steadied. In the rearview mirror, the turned-up soil looked slightly yellow, spread evenly behind me. The damp, earthy smell drifted into the cab—it was familiar, the smell of the land.
When the assessment ended, I threw those gloves, soaked through with sweat, into the trash can at the training station. They had fulfilled their mission, like the stone roller in my memory. In the past, we used a stone roller to flatten the soil and prepare it as a threshing ground for drying rice. Later, there were grain suction machines, grain turning machines, and dryers. The threshing ground was gradually replaced by concrete flooring, and the stone roller was left under the eaves. Later still, the eaves were torn down, and the new house had no eaves, so the stone roller lost its place as well.
On the bus ride back, through the window, I saw a drone in the sunset spraying a white mist of pesticide over the wheat field, even and fine. And by the field ridge, an old man stood with his hands behind his back, watching. His shadow was very long, and the mist sprayed by the drone was gently falling on a patch of tender green wheat seedlings just beyond that shadow.
Before parting, I said to the older sister who had trained with me, “Have your father-in-law choose a harvester soon. In the future, you can drive it yourself, and you’ll never have to ask someone else to harvest the rice again.”
