In the mountains of Enshi, Hubei Province, an agricultural technology company named "Youyoucao Eyu" is attempting to rewrite the rules of traditional Chinese medicinal herbs and agricultural product circulation with AI. In mid-July, a reporter visited its intelligent sorting center in the Enshi High-tech Zone and observed that medicinal materials such as angelica and gastrodia on the conveyor belt were precisely sorted into different grade channels by robotic arms after passing through a visual recognition system — the entire process required almost no human intervention. This company, rooted in the border region of Hubei and Chongqing, completed its transformation from "farmland" to "AI middle platform" in 2024.
"In the past, sorting relied on the experience of veteran workers, who could handle at most 200 kilograms per person per day, and quality control was unstable," said Zhang Mingyuan, CEO of Youyoucao Eyu, standing by the sorting line. Pointing to a large data screen displaying real-time fluctuations above, he added, "Now, the AI vision system can identify the texture, color, and cross-sectional features of over 30 types of medicinal materials, with an accuracy rate exceeding 97% and a processing capacity six times that of manual labor." The system was jointly developed by Youyoucao Eyu and an AI laboratory in Chongqing, with the core being the integration of a unique database of local medicinal herbs from the Eyu region with deep learning models — the team spent a year annotating over 500,000 images of local herbs.
AI's application in Youyoucao Eyu's operations goes beyond sorting. In the supply chain management backend, the reporter saw a prediction system based on historical transaction data and meteorological models: it can forecast price fluctuations for certain medicinal materials up to 14 days in advance and automatically push planting suggestions to contracted farmers. Zhang Mingyuan revealed that six months after the system went live, the company's inventory turnover rate increased by 22%, and the loss rate dropped by 15%. "In the past, we managed over 200 cooperatives with phone calls and Excel; now AI helps us make decisions," he said.
However, the process of technology implementation was not without challenges. Li Wei, the technical director responsible for AI deployment, admitted that the hardest part was getting farmers accustomed to relying on touch to accept machines. "We spent two weeks holding 'AI classes' in the village, using local dialects to demonstrate how the system identifies moldy Codonopsis pilosula. Later, some older farmers found that AI was more accurate than their own judgment, and they gradually became convinced." This localized AI promotion strategy has become one of the lessons that Youyoucao Eyu shares externally.
Industry observers pointed out that the case of Youyoucao Eyu represents a new direction for China's agricultural digital transformation: instead of pursuing large-scale, comprehensive smart agriculture platforms, it focuses on the two most painful points — "sorting and pricing" — and uses lightweight AI solutions to quickly generate benefits. An unnamed official from the Enshi Prefecture Agricultural Bureau confirmed to the reporter that the prefecture has planned to adopt Youyoucao Eyu's model as a demonstration project for "AI + local specialties" and promote it to other counties.
At the end of the interview, Zhang Mingyuan revealed the next step: building an "AI supply chain brain" for the Eyu region, integrating sorting, pricing, and logistics data, and opening it up for use by surrounding small farmers. "AI is not here to take away our jobs; it's here to help us hold our rice bowls more steadily," he said. Outside the window, trucks loaded with medicinal herbs were driving out of the park, heading along the mountain roads toward Chongqing and Changsha — this traditional supply chain is being recalibrated by invisible algorithms.