Workingsmarter

Chinese women farmers learn new techniques and skills to maintain family fields and improve livelihoods

Mechanization is important not only for agricultural production, but also for alleviation of drudgery and the heavy work load on women, children and the elderly.

For Wang Xiuzhen, transplanting rice seedlings all day in the past was tiring work. The paddy fields became a place of pain for the Chinese woman farmer in her 40s, causing her to suffer from endless back problems and dread each waking day.

Fortunately with the advancement of technology, Wang now has the use of a specialized machine that can transplant rice seedlings in paddy fields. Wang and the other women farmers in the area no longer suffer from back pain and she is upbeat about the future. “We have freed ourselves from the tedious work of planting paddy fields by hand,” she said.

“It’s very efficient. The paddy planter can transplant more than 3 (0.2 hectares) of field per hour, and it can transplant the seedling quickly requiring only one person to operate it,” said Wang.

Ni Yanye, 50, a woman farmer in Dazhuyin Village, Lianyungang City of Jiangsu Province, echoed Wu’s idea. She said mechanization has reduced much of her farming workload.

Ni’s husband works in Shandong Province and only returns home during the Chinese Spring Festival. Thanks to the use of machines, she can manage to grow wheat, corn and peanuts on her family’s 5 (around 0.33 hectares) of land on her own.

“I had to work for two weeks non-stop to harvest wheat in the hot summer days in the past, but now the wheat combine harvester can do wheat cutting, threshing and seed cleaning at the same time within one hour,” she told adding that for the use of the harvester, she only pays 80 yuan ($11.6) per (0.067 hectares).

“It’s not as painstaking as before to grow and harvest crops. With machines, it’s easy, fast and efficient,” she said. “After using the machines, I have much more time to take care of two children and do other things.”

She noted that farmers had to pick corncobs by hand and clear up corn straw in the past. But now the corn harvester can do all the work at the same time. “The smashed corn straw scattered in the field is good fertilizer,” she said.