China Daily Global Edition (USA)
Village farmers work together to sow seeds of success in poverty fight
Villagers tap turnaround from farming, industry to grow prosperity
Editor’s note: With China set to meet its goal this year of eliminating extreme poverty before next year’s 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China, this series looks at the efforts of different areas of the country to erase poverty and improve livelihoods.
When farmer Ren Lianjun switched from growing the angelica and astragalus Chinese medicinal plants to lily bulbs, he knew it wasn’t going to be easy. The lily bulbs, valued for their use to relieve coughs, dry throats and other respiratory ailments, would take three years to cultivate before any real rewards could be reaped.
But Ren, 52, now knows it was well worth the wait.
“I’ve made a fivefold increase in yield, up to 5,000 yuan ($736) a year for every 0.67 hectare, compared to previous common crops like corn, potatoes or angelica,” he said.
The farmer’s gains from investing in the future reflect those made at the broader level in his home village of Yuangudui in Weiyuan county of Dingxi, in Northwest China’s Gansu province. As part of a nationwide poverty alleviation drive, major investments to leverage the climate, soil and other local advantages have allowed Yuangudui villagers to work together, shed their poverty label and upgrade their economy, becoming a model for others on the country’s development road to a moderately prosperous society.
Ren started converting his 1.34-hectare plot to grow lily bulbs six years ago, after agriculture specialists from provincial capital Lanzhou identified the suitability of the area’s physical conditions for growing the valuable crop and transferred some of their expertise to local farmers. He now leads the charge to bank on lily bulb cultivation, himself renting more land for the crop and training many of the villagers increasingly involved in farming nearly one-fifth of about 370 hectares of the area’s arable land for the bulbs.
Together with wages from his 26-year-old son working outside the village, the lily bulb industry helped boost Ren’s four-member household income last year to about 100,000 yuan, a life-changing difference from the time before anti-poverty measures rolled out when they had to scrap by with common crops.
“We try to help each other in the village now with these new opportunities, in line with traditional community values,” Ren said.
About 2 million yuan is also being invested on a processing plant to upgrade the villagers’ lily bulb production and tap better logistics networks as well as e-commerce platforms to further raise incomes from the bulbs, township head Wang Xiaoming said.
Spurred by such encouragement, incentives and subsidies to farm better-yielding crops, including morel mushrooms that also tap the area’s milder and moister climate, more Yuangudui’s farmers like Ren are grouping together to reap the rewards of progress, development and industry, as the village moves firmly from the poverty it experienced less than a decade ago.
Improving lives together
On Feb 3, 2013, in the runup to the Chinese New Year celebrations, President Xi Jinping visited Yuangudui during an inspection tour of Gansu. Xi, who is also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, provided words of encouragement to the villagers — to work hard together to increase prosperity for the days ahead.
Yuangudui is in Tianjiahe township of Weiyuan county, under Dingxi city. It is comparatively more humid, with a milder highland climate than surrounding mountainous areas, at an altitude of more than 2,400 meters and receiving an average annual rainfall of 508 mm. The village covers 13.2 square kilometers, containing more than 440 households of nearly 2,000 villagers who were living mostly in poverty prior to the major improvements recorded after 2013.
Yuangudui had been at the front lines of the nation’s fight to eliminate extreme poverty — defined as living with less than 2,300 yuan in annual income — by the end of this year.
By the end of 2012, more than 220 households with nearly 1,100 villagers were targeted to receive major poverty alleviation measures. Per capita income from agriculture then was 660 yuan, with the per capita net income of farmers at just above 1,465 yuan and the poverty rate as high as 57 percent, according to local government figures.
But in 2016, as anti-poverty measures geared up following Xi’s visit, Yuangudui received accolades for being one of the “most beautiful villages” in the province, two years before it shed its poverty label entirely — by the end of 2019, the village no longer recorded any poverty-hit households, with the per capita disposable income of farmers reaching 10,789 yuan.
Weiyuan county itself contains the source of its namesake Weihe river, which is the largest tributary of the mighty Yellow River. The county lies in the central part of Gansu and is a key area for poverty alleviation efforts.
Weiyuan covers more than 2,000 sq km, with a total population of 345,000 including 323,000 residents involved in agriculture.
At the end of 2013, Weiyuan recorded 25,000 poverty-hit households totaling 102,300 people, with the poverty rate at 31.66 percent. In the past six years, 24,700 households totaling 100,400 residents were lifted from poverty, with the poverty rate dropping to 0.43 percent.
Amid the anti-poverty drive, Weiyuan has piped tap water to 22,900 households, including nearly 6,000 poverty-hit households containing about 24,000 residents. It has since attained a 100 percent safe drinking water compliance rate, up 8 percentage points from 2013, local government reported.
In 2019, the county recorded a GDP of about 3.69 billion yuan, up 1.38 billion yuan from that of 2013 and with an average annual growth rate of 6.6 percent.
The per capita disposable income of farmers alone reached 8,208 yuan, a net increase of 4,173 yuan over 2013, with an average annual growth rate of 10.4 percent.
On Feb 28, the provincial government affirmed that the county had been lifted from poverty.
Zhang Zhenya, deputy secretary of the county Party committee in charge of poverty alleviation work, said a multi-pronged development approach includes tapping leading industries to expand industrial channels and services to help ensure and raise incomes. Funds allocated to poverty alleviation work in the county reached 1.77 billion yuan, with the poverty rate reduced to 0.43 percent, Zhang said.
“We will work on innovation toward stable income mechanisms and the distribution model of the village economy,” Zhang said.
At least 24 agricultural investment companies, 32 major enterprises and 1,500 specialized farmer cooperatives have since been developed, with more than 20,000 needy farmers encouraged to take part in targeted production, according to the local government.
In terms of educational improvements, the county’s nine-year compulsory education consolidated rate has also reached 99.39 percent, rising 18.9 percentage points from that of 2013.
As for healthcare, authorities recorded more than 330 million yuan invested in medical facilities and services, with three county-level hospitals moved to new premises, 16 township hospitals renovated and at least 142 standardized village clinics set up, with the medical insurance participation rate of urban and rural residents hitting nearly 99 percent.
Under housing developments, nearly 290 million yuan has been invested to refurbish more than 17,800 dilapidated rural homes, while 780 million yuan has been used to help resettle about 6,700 households totaling more than 32,600 people to ensure safe living conditions.
The county has also rolled out the construction of a major Tianjiahe photovoltaic industrial park by injecting poverty alleviation funds of 4.2 million yuan, providing 2 megawatts of full grid power generation. The photovoltaic industry has since earned at least 720,000 yuan in the past three years, with the county investing another 390,000 yuan to help build morel-planting symbiotic infrastructure support for the village.
“Morels are commonly harvested from the wild, they are very sensitive so it’s not easy to cultivate them. But they are valuable – raw morels can sell for about 200 yuan a kilogram, or 2,000 yuan a kilogram for dried processed stocks.”
Bai Haihong, on Yuangudui village’s switch to farming betteryielding crops
Nurturing growth
Yuangudui villager Bai Haihong, 59, also used to grow traditional medicinal crops such as angelica and astragalus on less than 0.2 hectares of land, which earned him about 13,000 yuan annually. After joining the village initiative to cultivate morels in the past year, his income has jumped to about 70,000 yuan a year.
“Morels are commonly harvested from the wild, they are very sensitive so it’s not easy to cultivate them. But they are valuable — raw morels can sell for about 200 yuan a kilogram, or 2,000 yuan a kilogram for dried processed stocks,” Bai said.
“Our cooperative raked in about 250,000 yuan from morels this year, with profit at about 120,000 yuan,” said Dong Jianxin, 39, who heads the local agricultural and tourism projects. “We plan to plant one batch next April and another in August. Those, if successful, can reap us up to 460,000 yuan.”
Nearly one hectare in the village has been set aside so far to help grow morels in sheltered facilities that cultivate the prized fungi in carefully controlled planting conditions, with training, skills upgrade, distribution channels and even a research and development facility rolled out to “scale up production”, Dong said.
To promote the village’s rural and ecological tourism potential, at least 10 homestay and farmstay facilities have also been set up to accommodate the growing number of weekend visitors, with an adjacent sika deer park becoming one of the top attractions.
Villager Ma Yuhong works as one of six employees at the main Yuangudui restaurant, which seats more than 100 diners contributing up to 6,000 yuan in daily revenue during peak seasons.
Ma, 31, makes about 2,000 yuan a month for the shift work she does at the restaurant, which allows her to look after her two children during its downtime. Her family also used to farm common crops.
“My husband works in the local administration and our annual household income has doubled to about 30,000 yuan a year with these improvements,” she said.
Other than the locally grown morels, the restaurant specializes in chickens bred right in Yuangudui by fellow villagers like Yang Xintian.
Yang himself headed to Lanzhou construction sites for work before deciding to return to the village in 2003. He earned about 10,000 yuan a year raising chickens in his yard, barely making ends meet for his six-member household. Spurred by local government incentives and support to help develop the village economy, Yang soon set up a chicken breeding cooperative on the nearby hillside, covering about 0.27 hectares. Last year, Yang handled about 40,000 chickens as he rode on growing demand for his fowl beyond the village. By June, Yang, 40, reported up to 50,000 chickens raised, helping him raked in about 100,000 yuan.
He said county leaders had contacted him soon after President Xi’s visit to consider setting up the cooperative, with his proven expertise and experience in raising poultry.
Yang said it was tough initially, with both him and his wife getting about five hours’ rest a day because of the work.
“But life gradually improved. In 2015, we spent 170,000 yuan to renovate the family home with a 20,000-yuan village subsidy. The last major expenditure was 80,000 yuan to expand and upgrade the farm,” Yang said.
“Now both children in the family are in school and the elderly residents in good health. We are very happy,” he said.