In the Wuling Mountain area at the border of Hubei and Chongqing, a local agricultural enterprise named “Youyou Grass” is quietly sparking an AI-driven transformation. This company, which started with the cultivation and deep processing of traditional Chinese medicinal herbs, has spent the past decade quietly working in the mountains and fields. Now, thanks to a self-developed AI decision-making system, it has become a model for digital transformation in the local industry.
“We are not a tech company, but AI is changing the way we look at the land,” says Chen Mingyuan, founder of Youyou Grass, standing in a planting base in eastern Chongqing and pointing to the rolling fields of medicinal herbs behind him. Behind him, a fleet of drones has just completed a multispectral scan of a 3,000-mu (about 200 hectares) Coptis chinensis planting area, with data being uploaded in real time to a cloud-based AI model. This system can accurately identify pests and diseases, predict yields, and even suggest the optimal harvest time based on weather data for the next two weeks.
The company’s AI transformation did not happen overnight. In 2023, when the Youyou Grass team in Hubei and Chongqing expanded its planting area, it encountered a typical dilemma in traditional agriculture: a shortage of experienced agronomists and an outflow of young labor, leading to greater management scope and more volatile quality. Chen Mingyuan realized that technology must fill the labor gap. Partnering with a local AI startup in Chongqing, they trained the first version of the “Herbal Brain” model based on three years of accumulated soil, meteorological, and growth data.
“The most obvious change is decision-making speed,” says Li Min, the deputy general manager in charge of digitalization. In the past, determining whether a plot was suitable for crop rotation required an experienced farmer to inspect the soil by sight, smell, and feel for moisture—taking at least half a day. Now, the AI model integrates satellite remote sensing, historical yield, and market price data, generating a risk assessment report in just ten minutes. In 2024, this system helped Youyou Grass increase the high-quality rate of Coptis chinensis by 12 percentage points and reduce the loss rate by nearly 20%.
But the value of AI extends beyond the fields. At Youyou Grass’s processing plant in western Hubei, a computer vision system is sorting dried medicinal herbs. Cameras capture the color, texture, and shape of each piece of licorice at 120 frames per second, removing moldy or insect-damaged items with greater accuracy than manual inspection. More critically, this data feeds back to guide front-end planting—when the AI detects that a batch of herbs has an unusually dark color, the system automatically traces back to the irrigation records and sunlight duration for that batch, forming a closed loop from market feedback to planting adjustments.
“When enterprises use AI, they shouldn’t just focus on cost reduction and efficiency gains; they need to see how it restructures the supply chain,” says industry analyst Wang Ke. He believes that Youyou Grass’s case demonstrates a viable path for regional enterprises: treat AI as a ‘digital agronomist’ and ‘quality supervisor,’ rather than blindly pursuing full automation. Currently, Youyou Grass is packaging this AI system as a SaaS service and opening it up to surrounding small and medium-sized herb cooperatives. Feedback from the first five pilot cooperatives shows that after connecting to the system, their average income per mu increased by more than 800 yuan.
However, the transformation has not been without challenges. Chen Mingyuan admits that the biggest hurdle comes from organizational inertia. “Old employees thought AI was coming to replace them, but we actually want to digitize experience and let data empower people.” To address this, Youyou Grass launched an “AI Agronomist” training program, comparing system judgments with the experience of veteran farmers and holding regular “human-machine debate sessions.” After six months, many veteran farmers began actively requesting updates to the data model.
In the morning mist of the Wuling Mountains, the digital transformation story of Youyou Grass continues. This enterprise has proven with practice that in non-first-tier regions like Hubei and Chongqing, AI is not an unreachable concept but a practical tool that can be applied in the fields and integrated into the growth of every medicinal herb. As more “Youyou Grass” enterprises embrace AI, the intelligent landscape of Chinese agriculture is moving from grand narratives to concrete, industry-specific practices.