Rising potential reverses sector’s employee shortfall
Before 2016, sheep farmers in Huanxian county in the northwestern province of Gansu were unwilling to see their educated children return to the countryside and follow in their footsteps.
That meant it was hard to hire college graduates to work as shepherds when the county started introducing young talent to develop the industry, according to Ji Yongfeng, head of the Huanxian College Student Sheepbreeding Association.
“The place was listed as impoverished. Sheep farming, which provided a living for most people, was not mechanized or profitable. Neither the graduates nor their parents would accept them returning to villages to deal with sheep,” he said.
In 2016, Zhongsheng Sheep Industry Development, which championed new breeds of sheep and technologies, was introduced.
Ji, who started working for the company as a veterinarian that year, was put in charge of recruiting graduates. “The company aims to guide herders, who are used to free-range breeding, onto a professional track. College graduates have better understanding of technology and can play a leading role among the herders,” he said.
In 2018, the association had just 60 graduates, but now the number is more than 400.
Some work at the company’s base, while others moved to live and work in villages to help farmers raise sheep after the county government started providing technical services for the locals.
Those services include preventing and treating disease, along with providing insurance and guidance on sales and technical issues.
“We planned to recruit graduates from majors related to animal husbandry and veterinary medicine, but only a few suitable candidates applied,” Ji said.
“The field lacks graduates, so we dropped the recruitment restrictions on majors.”
He added that the association plans to recruit 1,000 more graduates in the next three years.
Now, the graduates’ backgrounds cover many majors, from criminal studies to chemistry.
“Their shortcomings can be made up through practical work,” Ji said. He added that new recruits undergo three months of intense training provided by front-line employees and veterinarians at sheep-breeding bases.
He said it is easier to hire college graduates now because the industry’s potential is so obvious. Some even go on to start their own businesses after gaining experience with the company and in villages.
“The monthly salary of about 5,000 yuan ($762) is not much lower than that for graduates in big cities, but living expenses here are much lower. Also, the association is a platform that allows them to do something valuable for other people,” Ji said.
In 2013, he quit his job at a pig farm in Xi’an, capital of Shaanxi province, where he had worked for two years after graduating from the Northwest Agriculture and Forestry University in Yangling, Shaanxi.
He decided to return home to Huanxian because the local government was expanding recruitment for its breeding industry.
He joined the county’s animal husbandry and veterinary bureau and was initially tasked with disease prevention work in villages.
However, he found it tough to persuade the villagers to vaccinate their sheep.
“One time, I was telling some villagers how to protect their sheep from disease and an old herder asked me a question. ‘I have raised sheep for half my life, so do you think I need you to teach me?’” he said.
“Some people were not prepared to accept vaccination because some sheep died as a result of an allergic reaction (to the shots).”
Ji refused to give up, though, so he maintained the vaccination program while also treating any animals that fell sick in the villages.
“Eventually, the people began to trust me and contacted me when they encountered problems,” he said.
The county government said that thanks to the efforts of veterinarians like Ji, the disease prevention rate in Huanxian has risen from 40 percent to more than 90 percent.