Vegetable farming bringing about new opportunities
In the village of Phuntsang in Panam county in the city of Shigatse, Penpa Dondrup sits by his vegetable-farming greenhouses, selling produce to passers-by.
The Tibetan man, in his 70s, was the former chief of Phuntsang village. He said he was among the pioneers in Panam to begin vegetable farming and one of the witnesses to the county’s agricultural transformation — from a “granary of Tibet” into a diversified agricultural economy.
His family now operates several greenhouses, with each one yielding more than 10,000 yuan ($1,480) in net income.
“In the past, we made only 2,000 yuan from growing highland barley on each mu (0.165 acres) of land every year,” Penpa Dondrop said. “And now the per-hectare revenue from the greenhouses presents a more-than-tenfold increase from the old days.”
He said growing vegetables was a completely novel idea for local farmers just over two decades ago.
“You could hardly see any vegetables, even in the markets,” Penpa Dondrup said. “Vegetables were luxuries for rich people and their selection was limited to such varieties as carrots and potatoes.”
He recalled that the local government began to promote greenhouse vegetable farming in 1998 by inviting agronomists and skilled farmers from East China’s Shandong province, which is one of the leading vegetable producing regions in the country.
“But farmers were reluctant to accept the new idea,” Penpa Dondrup said. “They said they were so accustomed to highland barley farming and they didn’t dare to try the new crops.”
He said Zhang Jiming from Shandong helped them realize vegetable farming is a much more profitable business than growing highland barley.
Zhang was a skilled farmer from Shandong’s Jinan city. He has been in Tibet for more than 20 years on a mission to teach local farmers to grow vegetables in greenhouses.
His first destination was in Phuntsang village. He said the difficulty of his mission is out of his expectations.
“We first run a demonstrative greenhouse to teach locals how to farm. But they didn’t seem ready to accept all these new things.
“In their mind, except highland barley, everything green belongs to category of forage grass and that should be the food for animals, instead of humans.”
Zhang said he could endure all kinds of physical difficulties like altitude sickness, as Panam is located at an elevation of about 13,100 feet. But the most difficult challenge for him was persuading the locals to start a new kind of business.
“I visited all the families in the village and told them ‘if there is any loss (from growing vegetables), I will cover it, and if there is any profit, you take it home’,” Zhang recalled.
Zhang succeeded, with more farmers deciding to learn from him. Vegetable farming has since become a prosperous business in Phuntsang village. It later spread to the rest of Panam, making it a major vegetable production base in Tibet.
Nowadays, vegetable farming has been popular in Tibet, with the industry reaching even more remote areas like Ngari and Nagchu.
Vegetable farming has changed the lifestyle for locals in Tibet.
In the markets of every county and city in the autonomous region, one can find almost all varieties of vegetables commonly seen in the rest of the country, at similar affordable prices.
Penpa Dondrup believes that a diet featuring more vegetables can improve people’s health.
“In our village, there are more than 40 residents aged above 60, including one man in his 90s,” Penpa Dondrup said. “Some researchers visiting our village told us a change in diet could partially attribute to this increase of life span.”