Now, Cailu is home to about 80 hectares of highly mechanized fields of hybrid rice, with each hectare yielding more than 15 metric tons a year, said Xu Xufeng, a local Party official.

To build such facilities, the village authorities have rented farmland via an arrangement known as a "land transfer", a practice commonly adopted to centralize the piecemeal fields previously tilled by individual farmers.

Cailu invested more than 10 million yuan ($1.4 million) to equip the fields with tech-filled machines, and leased the plots to several rice-growing operations.

"From transplanting rice seedlings to field management to the harvest, the whole process can be accomplished with the minimum of human involvement," Xu said.

However, the village's embrace of such cutting-edge technologies is not cost-effective, at least in the short term, he noted.

"We want the land to become a showcase of what grain fields can achieve," Xu said, adding that the system has great potential and could generate astounding profits if applied to major growing areas, such as the expansive plains of the central province of Henan.