A bold project: when rice is not always just rice
Print Edition
China鈥檚 Beidahuang Group agricultural conglomerate has just concluded the first season harvest on a modern rice plantation in Xiaogang Village, Anhui Province.
More than 30 rice varieties were harvested in the pilot plantation of 33 hectares of field.
With the support of the local community, the company conducted the project so that farmers can have a free and assured choice of what rice strains they would like to grow next season. The selection method meant the newly harvested rice was cooked so that farmers could have a taste of each one before making the decision.
Yan Lihua, 74, has leased his farmland to another villager, so that his family can focus on running the countryside bed and breakfast business, and those more able can get more farmland in the village to carry out larger scale farming.
Seniors like Yan have childhood memories of hunger, and the village was known for producing beggars because of the land鈥檚 low yield, before it won the fame as the birthplace of China鈥檚 rural reform.
Yan remembered the autumn harvest of 1979 was particularly joyous after decades of famine.
The unprecedented harvest came a year after farmers made a secret pact to resist the country鈥檚 egalitarian agricultural system. This was the event that ignited China鈥檚 nationwide rural land reform.
The pact meant that after the farmers handed a certain percentage of their produce to the government, they were able to keep the rest of the harvest from their contracted land themselves. Owning their own fields gave farmers enthusiasm to carry out intensive farming.
鈥淭hat year, the village recorded a harvest of 66,500kg of rice, six times of that reaped a year ago,鈥 said Yan Yushan, whose father Yan Hongchang was among the first 18 farmers to sign the secret agreement to divide communally owned farmland into family plots in 1978.
The family land contract responsibility system that derived from Xiaogang was spread nationwide by 1984, when China鈥檚 per-capita grain amount reached 400kg. It basically solved the country鈥檚 food problem.
The name of Xiaogang has since been fixed in the nation鈥檚 memory as the start of China鈥檚 reform.
鈥淲e fought hard to get the land use right. Now we transfer it to earn rent. We are relieved from farming and can focus on things that we want to do,鈥 said Yan the senior.
The pioneering reform spirit has been taken on by village, which continues to motivate new reform initiatives.
Yin Yurong, a pig farmer in the village, recently brought up a new idea 颅鈥 setting up a land stock cooperative.
鈥淭he former reform helped ensure us food. It is the responsibility of our generation to make new reforms to make people rich,鈥 she said.
Yin explained that her idea of land stock was not just to reward land leasing with rental fees, but also a certain amount of dividends from the land use if the land leaser joins the cooperative.
In August, her proposal was endorsed by the village committee. So far, over 40 households have signed up.
鈥淲e encourage the idea because it can help pool together redundant labor and release unused farmland kept by villagers,鈥 said Li Jinzhu, Party chief of the village committee.
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