Youyi Farm was established with Soviet assistance in 1954. Its name means 'friendship,' linking the farm's beginnings with that international relationship. In July 2023, a Nanjing University history team followed its agricultural story through Youyi County Museum and the Beidahuang Agricultural Machinery Expo Park. Photographs and objects traced the construction years, while machines from the 1950s onward showed how the tools and scale of fieldwork changed.
From the journal
Youyi Farm: machinery and the making of a town
A field report links the county museum and machinery displays with the agricultural landscape of Youyi Farm.
In the same city · Shuangyashan ↗Machines beside the history of a state farm
The working field beyond the display
The team's next stops brought the museum history into contemporary production. At the farm's science and technology centre, researchers showed laboratories, agricultural displays and work on black-soil protection. At Farm Branch Five, Team Two, the visitors saw drones carrying out crop-protection operations over the fields. Interviews with retired workers added personal accounts of the farm's earlier years. These different encounters—machine, laboratory, working field and recollection—follow the same place across generations of agricultural change.