Science and Technology Ambassadors Help Overhaul Agricultural Pursuits

A resident of Hangzhou, the capital city of coastal Zhejiang Province, Wang Ziqiang began traveling to Wanpai Township, Taishun County, Wenzhou City, in the southern part of the province in 2005 in order to fulfil his duties as a science and technology ambassador. He usually gets up at dawn on the days he makes the half-day-long, 400-km journey and spends more than 60 days a year in the township.

A professor of agricultural extension specialising in crop physiology and soybean breeding at Zhejiang University prior to retiring in 2021, Wang applies the fruits of scientific research and new knowledge from various disciplines to agricultural practices via farmer education.

China's Ministry of Science and Technology launched the Science and Technology Ambassadors Programme in 1999. The experts who are involved are responsible for designing and providing scientific and technological training and guidance and facilitating collaboration between farmers, research institutions, and the private sector in an effort to modernise agriculture, stimulate entrepreneurship, and achieve sustainable development in the rural areas that they are dispatched to.

Pulling strings

Wang has continued serving as a science and technology ambassador during his retirement. The 65-year-old is in good health and is happy that the scientific knowledge and education that he disseminates and provides help create positive changes in rural areas. For example, he introduced two of the then latest varieties of sweet potato that the Zhejiang Academy of Agricultural Sciences had developed and showed farmers how to grow them during his first year working in Taishun after learning that the people who cultivate the traditional regional root vegetable only generated an average of a little over RMB1,000 from the undertaking per year, which enabled them to achieve a 50% increase in the revenue within a year. He eventually introduced five more new varieties to the area and helped Wanpai establish a sweet potato farming base.

Wang has introduced a total of 129 varieties of crops, including 8 varieties of rice, 67 varieties of beans, 5 species of maize, 3 types of potatoes, and 30 varieties of other vegetables, to farmers living in the township thus far.

The science and technology ambassador has also invited other experts to assist him in Taishun. For instance, Zhejiang University livestock farming experts Yin Zhaozheng and Ma Youzhi aided him in addressing problems related to poultry feed preparation and honey storage that the county suffered from. Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences' Tea Research Institute academician Chen Zongmao and Zhejiang University professor Wang Yuefei created a team of experts that helped reinvigorate the county's tea industry as well. Wang Ziqiang's role as the training office director of Zhejiang University's Agricultural Technology Promotion Centre made it possible for him to pool resources and make these types of arrangements.

Farmers work on a tea plantation in Zhejiang Province. Cultivation of new types of tea, implementation of mechanised harvesting processes and flow production, and other recommendations that science and technology ambassador Wang Ziqiang has made have helped increase production volume and sales prices in Taishun County, Wenzhou City.

More than 80 percent of the tea plantations in Wanpai are mechanised at present according to Xie Xihe, one of Taishun's major tea growers. His plantation generated over RMB31 million of output value in 2016 after he expanded its area to more than 1.3 sq km under Wang's guidance.

"He has helped enable us to experience the power of science and technology," Xie summarised after completing his work with the ambassador.

Two tea farmers can now harvest 1,500 kg of leaves per day as a result of the mechanisation that has occurred in Wanpai, whereas a maximum of a little over 50 kg could be harvested per person per day in the past. The amount of land devoted to the undertaking has been increasing in the township as well. Tea is now grown on more than 6.6 sq km of land, or one-eighth of the total tea growing area in Taishun.

Wang also teaches farmers to think in an innovative manner and write project proposals. He helped beekeeper Yan Lichao learn how to keep various species of the insect, develop and patent a new type of beehive that can help increase honey production from 5 kg to at least 15 kg per year, obtain food quality and safety certifications, build a brand, and set an agricultural record for the largest beehive of a certain type of bee species in Zhejiang, which has helped Wanpai's honey industry become more well-known, for example. Other beekeepers in the area were also trained a total of 500 times by the professor. The output value of Yan's beekeeping operation has grown from several hundred thousand yuan to RMB30 million, and a national demonstration cooperative with over 100 members has emerged, which has helped promote Taishun's beekeeping industry and enabled the people who are involved to become more prosperous.

"Science and technology ambassadors are better than financial and material support," Taishun Party Committee Secretary Zhang Hongguo declared when asked about the programme.

Growing from a pool of 225 in early 1999 to hundreds of thousands in 2022, China's science and technology ambassadors have played an important role in accelerating industrialisation in many of its rural areas. Organisations and policymakers that want to apply science and technology to poverty reduction may want to take a look at China's experience in this area.

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