Scientists Help Villagers Embark on the Road to Prosperity in Shuicheng

Editor's Note

Situated among the Wumeng Mountains in southwest China, Shuicheng is endowed with lush evergreen forests and other striking scenery that imparts quiet beauty throughout the year. The county was also one of the most impoverished places in China until recently, however. The problem was especially bad in Qinglin Township, which lacked shops, restaurants, hotels, paved roads, and even a post office before a poverty alleviation campaign was implemented in Shuicheng. The CAS eventually began providing technological, industrial, and educational assistance in the administrative area, which helped it emerge from poverty and set off on the road to prosperity.

Key Figures

• Potato yields increased from 15,000 kg/ha to 25,000 kg/ha.• 133.33 ha of land is devoted to producing basalt fabric as of October 2020.

• Shuicheng County recorded RMB31 billion of GDP in 2019, a year-on-year increase of 7.7%.

Potatoes Lead to Big Changes

"I'm just a regular Chinese Academy of Sciences employee," Zhong Naiqin, a staff member who had worked in Shuicheng, stated in 2020, in awe of the transformation that has been occurring there. "All I know how to do is grow potatoes."

Although potato farming is a pillar industry in the county, yields stood at only 15,000 kg/ha in 2016, which is considerably lower than what is possible in the area. The local government ultimately decided to ask the CAS to help update the outdated approaches and replace the suboptimal varieties that were being used in order to address the situation and boost growers' incomes.

The institution accepted the offer, but the task would not be easy. In 2016, a special team that was formed learned that the poverty rate stood at 18.9% in the county, which is more than twice as high as the average rate in Guizhou Province. A total of 48,600 of Shuicheng’s households were impoverished, or 167,500 people.

"Locals have worked as farmers for generations," some of the CAS experts working in the administrative area noted a few years ago, reflecting on the work they had been tasked with. "We had to think about how we could help the county eliminate poverty and become more beautiful and more prosperous."

Shuicheng poverty alleviation team leader Xia Yong found that few crops other than potatoes were suitable for cultivation in the mountainous county after investigating the conditions that prevailed with Zhong and 37 other experts. They also interviewed impoverished people household by household in the villages they worked in in order to learn more about their needs and their situations.

"We began providing potato farming training and were determined to start in the poorest places," the CAS employee explained. "Our work was meaningful and gave us a great sense of accomplishment!"

Zhong's team launched a pilot project involving fertilizer synergists, loss-control pesticide agents, scab control, and other elements in potato fields in a village in Shuicheng's Qinglin Township known as Tianba with the township government, which boosted nitrogen usage efficiency by 30% and, therefore, reduced pesticide usage by 30%. The team also used environmentally friendly techniques to prevent late blight, which led to an increase in yields the same year. The methods were also applied to red peppers and ginseng fruit, which had a dramatic impact, and enabled 188 of Tianba's farmer households emerge from poverty within the year.‍

Zhong Naiqin (in green) explains potato farming techniques to some villagers in Shuicheng County, Liupanshui City, Guizhou Province. (Photo by f.china.com.cn)

"The secretary of the Shuicheng County Party Committee eventually asked us to provide science and technology support and promote green farming methods throughout the county and help leading local companies produce seeds and potatoes with the ability to resist viruses, which we did," Zhong explained excitedly.

"We can see that the application of science and technology is a great way to eradicate poverty and can prevent people who have escaped from it from falling back into it!" the CAS expert continued, commenting on the remarkable outcomes that local companies, cooperatives, and government bodies have achieved.

A seed potato breeding center was established and put into operation in June 2018, which helped ensure that the local potato industry would have a bright future. Around 15 million high-quality, virus-resistant seedlings, 30 million mini potatoes, and 12,000-15,000 tons of seeds are produced at the facility every year, supporting 6,666.67 ha's worth of commercial potato farming in Shuicheng.

"I'm fortunate to be familiar with some techniques that address various problems, which makes it possible for me to do something for people who need assistance," Zhong added cheerfully. "Every hectare counts. Smiles on people's faces are better than any paper that we publish."

In Yuanba Village, Panlong Town, Shuicheng County, resident Yang Chaolun is one of the people who has experienced the benefits of the huge changes that science and technology have facilitated in the area. He mentioned that a 0.2-ha trial plot that his family established after CAS experts began providing support and inputs such as seed and fertilizer yielded more than 5,000 kg of potatoes and that this resulted in his income doubling. The next year, the exciting results that Yang achieved compelled him to begin growing potatoes on 0.67 additional ha of land.

Industrial Development Creates a Path Forward

A natural, green, high-tech fiber product that does not require much energy to produce or pollute the air or water unlike many other fibers, basalt fiber has favorable mechanical properties, is resistant to both acidic and alkaline environments, and has excellent insulation performance. It is, therefore, widely used in aerospace, architecture, the automotive industry, chemistry, medicine, agriculture, and other military and civilian undertakings.

Spools of basalt fiber yarn (left) and a view of a basalt fiber under a high-magnification microscope (right) (Photos by china.com.cn)

Shuicheng is endowed with an estimated nearly 300 million tons of basalt and features good mining conditions, but many challenges stood in the way of the industry becoming a pillar of local poverty reduction. Companies based in the resource-rich county used expensive raw materials from other regions, which was unfortunate, and most of the products that were produced downstream were for low-end applications such as water pipes, plates, wind and lighting systems, breeding boxes and environmentally friendly water cellars. They could not be used in high-end fields such as electronics, aerospace, and military industries due to the unstable performance of the fibers produced by the local companies.

The CAS established a workstation in Shuicheng County and began providing technical support in areas such as raw material analysis, surface treatment technology, and high-end application in order to remove bottlenecks. The team analyzed the elements that were present and their proportions, provided a refined plan to localize raw materials, and stabilized basalt fiber performance.

A 133.33-ha facility known as Shuicheng Basalt Science and Technology Industrial Park officially opened in Shuicheng Economic Development Zone in October 2020 and has been operating smoothly ever since. Pieces of basalt are broken into filaments that are heated and twisted and merged into soft yet strong "golden threads" on basalt fiber production lines, which are then woven into "cloth" and made into pipes, steel bars, clothing, cable support brackets, and a variety of other products by skilled assembly line workers at the site.

Experts enabled Shuicheng County to utilize its raw basalt fiber materials and make breakthroughs in production technology, product development and fulfillment of design criteria. Shuicheng Basalt Science and Technology Industrial Park is able to produce up to 30,000 tons of basalt fibers and 80,000 tons of composite materials a year as of October 2020, which is nearly seven times what the county achieved before the park was established. Over 180 people have been hired, most of whom used to be farmers, including members of households that were impoverished at the time, which has enabled them to learn new skills and change their lives.

Industrial development is key to poverty alleviation. Technological support can address production difficulties, while industrial development helps secure long-lasting outcomes. The CAS, therefore, introduced new varieties of prickly pear, turmeric, edible fungi, and plants used in traditional Chinese medicine, improved and optimized production processes, and updated industrial chains in order to make them more competitive.

Training and Education Lead to Organic Growth

Xia Yong thought that challenging living conditions and the fact that Shuicheng's inhabitants speak a local dialect were nothing compared to villagers' initial skepticism and distrust of the undertakings. Initial field investigations revealed that residents were generally poorly educated, with only about 20% of impoverished households having completed primary education, which made it hard for them to embrace new ideas.

"It is very easy to lift a household out of poverty," noted Bai Chunli, former president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in 2020. "You can just buy sheep for them. But what if the sheep die? They would fall back into poverty right away. So we can’t just give poverty-stricken people things. It's best to focus on helping them develop their abilities and improve their motivation to become more prosperous. Only in this way can we eradicate poverty once and for all."

"At the end of the day, residents need to be empowered to rely on themselves if we are going to truly eliminate poverty," Xia stated while working in a Shuicheng village. "Give someone a fish and you feed them for a day; teach them to fish and you feed them for a lifetime."

The CAS Shuicheng team delivered lectures covering scientific and technological topics that logged total attendance of more than 600, and over 20,000 of the county's inhabitants were provided with training covering agricultural techniques, operations, and management, which led to the emergence of competent farmers that are committed to the local economy.

Increasing numbers of formerly impoverished Shuicheng residents, such as Zhao Yuhong, have been developing greater intrinsic motivation and stopped simply waiting for things to improve in recent years. The Yuanba native used to work as a migrant laborer outside of the county but eventually returned to his village and started a new chapter in his life. The CAS team showed him how to produce potatoes, kiwis, mushrooms, and other agricultural products, which boosted his income. He also taught himself other new skills and got admitted to a junior college.

"In the past, I didn’t know where my life was going, and I lost interest in everything," Zhao recounted. "Now I have learned a lot of agricultural knowledge and feel that my life is getting more and more exciting."

The Administrative Bureau of the Chinese Academy of Sciences also built kindergartens and primary schools in collaboration with local governments, provided them with funding, and trained teachers in order to improve the educational environment in the county. A program known as "Approaching the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Approaching Scientists" was also launched, which has helped hundreds of teachers and students improve their scientific literacy.

In 2019, the county's GDP reached RMB31 billion, a year-on-year increase of 7.7%, while annual disposable income per capita rose to RMB10,354 in its rural areas, a year-on-year increase of 11.1%. Shuicheng formally emerged from poverty when it passed a third-party assessment at the beginning of 2020 and was even designated a “Top 100 West China County,” which is a distinction awarded to counties, banners, and county-level special administrative zones that achieve overall excellence as measured by indicators in four areas – economic scale, economic vitality, economic quality and quality of life.

"We will continue to engage in industrial development, expand pilot projects, and train farmers in order to help them become more professional and more technically proficient so as to create a stable and effective development path that boosts the organic growth of the local economy," Xia concluded.

For more information, please contact WFP China COE (wfpcn.coe@wfp.org)