Technology helps cotton farmers
Print Edition
In four days, Lu Gaolin, a cotton farmer in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, completely finished harvesting his 64-hectare cotton field thanks to a gigantic green machine.
The cotton picker is way more efficient than manual labor.
“It used to take seven or eight workers over two months to complete the job of manually picking cotton,” he said.
The harvest season in Xinjiang, China’s largest cotton-producing region, will last until mid-November, with output expected to reach 5.2 million tons. The region contributes nearly 90 percent of China’s cotton production capacity and about 20 percent of global production.
Resistant to drought and sandstorms, cotton is an indispensable crop for the farmers’ in Xinjiang. In their eyes, the rumors about “forced labor” in Xinjiang are absurd.
Arkin Rehim, a cotton farmer in the region’s Yuli County, has a great fondness for cotton because it helps his family live the happy life they dreamed of.
“We will never allow anyone to smear Xinjiang or defile the cotton we have planted,” he said. “I have confidence in Xinjiang cotton and will never give up planting it because of rumors.”
Cotton-picking used to be an exhausting job.
“We even worked until one or two o’clock each night during the harvest season,” Lu said.
However, since manual cotton-picking became a thing of the past as early as 2014 in Shawan City, Lu’s hometown, farmers there have been freed from the arduous physical labor. This year, more than 70 percent of the 2.48 million hectares of cotton fields in Xinjiang will be harvested mechanically.
The whole process of planting and harvesting has been mechanized on more than 90 percent of fields in northern Xinjiang. The mechanization rate of picking has reached 40 percent and is still rising in the south.
Workers of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang choose jobs of their own volition, and there is no coercion of any kind, said a white paper issued by the State Council Information Office.
Mijit Bakri, a cotton farmer in Bachu County, could barely feed his family of six over the past 20 years with his 2-hectare field. Now he and his family have bid farewell to poverty.
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