As the spring farming begins, the agricultural machinery market is experiencing a sales peak.

According to Jinhua Customs, in 2024, Jinhua – in East China's Zhejiang province – exported agricultural machinery worth 2.97 billion yuan ($410.10 million), marking a significant year-on-year increase of 53.8 percent.

Zhejiang Xinglaihe Agricultural Equipment Co, based in Yongkang, a county-level city in Jinhua, began researching small tractors three years ago. Zhang Baohuan, the company's research director, saw a promising future for exporting tractors to Eastern and Western Europe, Southeast Asia, West Asia, and South America.

"Our small tractors are priced at one-third to half of Japanese agricultural machinery. Since we started selling small tractors last year, exports have accounted for 50 percent of total orders," Zhang said.

Xinglaihe manufactures 85 percent of its agricultural machinery components in-house, including engines, front and rear axles, and gearboxes, according to Zhang.

Zhang and his team have been actively collaborating with institutions such as Zhejiang University, Zhejiang University of Science and Technology, Zhejiang Sci-Tech University, the China National Rice Research Institute, and the Zhejiang Provincial Agricultural Machinery Institute to tackle technical challenges.

Zhang said that Xinglaihe's rice transplanters and tractors are now autonomous and plant seedlings more uniformly than manual methods. The machinery can also automatically turn and maneuver in the fields.

Yongkang currently hosts over 1,650 agricultural machinery and parts manufacturers, forming a diverse ecosystem of rice machinery, garden tools, hilly farming equipment, and smart forestry equipment.