China Agricultural Machinery Museum

China Agricultural Machinery Museum

Over 30 years ago, the discovery of the Hemudu Site during a water conservancy project brought fame to Yuyao City in Zhejiang Province both at home and abroad. The “Hemudu Site Museum” showcases rice grains over 7,000 years old and a large number of advanced farming tools, astonishing people around the world. In Yuyao, there is a lesser-known museum closely related to agriculture — the “China Agricultural Machinery Museum.”

Stepping into the China Agricultural Machinery Museum, you’ll find spacious and bright exhibition halls. The exhibits are categorized by different functions and types of agricultural machinery, including plowing machinery, planting machinery, irrigation and drainage machinery, plant protection machinery, harvesting machinery, and threshing machinery. A wide variety of agricultural tools are on display. The museum collects and exhibits manual and motorized farming implements from various dynasties, including those used for plowing, irrigation, seeding, plant protection, harvesting, threshing, agricultural product processing, transportation, and weaving. These range from buckets, waterwheels, ox carts, and hand pumps to mechanical pumps, and from old wooden plows and iron-headed plows to tractors... These exhibits systematically demonstrate the development and evolution of China’s agricultural tools and machinery — from simple to complex, from basic to advanced, from primitive to modern.

The museum also houses an agricultural machinery history exhibition hall, displaying achievements from various technological innovations, prototypes of newly developed or improved agricultural machinery, relevant materials on agricultural machinery products, as well as precious historical documents, photos, and inscriptions related to agricultural machinery. These serve as important resources for studying the history and culture of agricultural machinery. The China Agricultural Machinery Museum showcases “the continuous development and evolution of China’s agricultural machinery, reflecting the wisdom and achievements of the Chinese working people in overcoming and transforming nature. It promotes agricultural machinery culture and plays a role in 'preserving history, informing governance, educating the public, and fostering development.' It serves as a base for exhibiting, demonstrating, promoting, and training in agricultural machinery research, as well as an excellent educational resource for patriotism. Its establishment has filled a gap in the research and collection of agricultural machinery in China.”

Building on significant economic progress, the agricultural machinery professionals in Yuyao interpret the past, present, and future of agricultural mechanization from a cultural perspective. They promote the development of agricultural mechanization through agricultural machinery culture, establishing the first agricultural machinery museum in China. The China Agricultural Machinery Museum not only preserves the wisdom and hard work of our ancestors but also embodies the thoughts and explorations of future generations. It reflects the faith and determination of Yuyao’s agricultural machinery professionals in advancing the cause of agricultural mechanization.