Across China: A pepper's journey to the school canteen: school meals help villagers get rich

Liu Hezhong has been farming vegetables for decades in south China, but he had never seen chili peppers hanging on the stem so late in autumn.

"I have never harvested peppers at this time," he said, pointing at the peppers in the greenhouse.

Liu, 69, lives in Xingguo County, east China's Jiangxi Province. Xingguo is known as the "county of the Red Army", because more than 80,000 people, 35 percent of the county, joined in the Red Army about 80 years ago.

Now Xingguo is still an impoverished county, where the disposable income of urban residents is 22,000 yuan (about 3,200 U.S. dollars), and that of rural residents 7,850 yuan, about 70 percent of the national average.

Liu's son and daughter-in-law are migrant workers, leaving three children behind for the old couple to care for. They grow rice to feed themselves. Liu has tuberculosis and bronchitis, and spends more than 200 yuan a month on medicine, but until recently the couple's only monthly income was their living allowance of 400 yuan.

The greenhouses at Jiecun were set up at the beginning of this year, with about 50 hectares of land currently in use.

Liu's job in the greenhouse includes weeding, fertilizing and harvesting. He does not feel very tired after working for eight hours.

"Most of the workers here are elderly or weak like Liu," said Wu Fuhua, CEO of Jijixian Agricultural Development. "They are not strong enough for farm work, and with left-behind children to take care of, they can't seek jobs elsewhere. With this job they can earn 60 yuan a day."

The job also changed people's habits. "Like urban residents, they clock in and out each day," Wu continued. "When they are busy, they have less time for neighborhood disputes."

Wu, 53, used to be village head and has spent more than 30 years working with farmers. According to him, in Ganzhou, 70 percent of vegetables used to be grown in other provinces. "Modern agriculture started late in Ganzhou," he said.

Villagers like Liu have been trained to grow vegetables scientifically. "I was told that we could plant peppers in June, rather than in Spring."

Jijixian Agriculture has contracts with 30 poor families. In Ganzhou, each family below the poverty line is entitled to a 50,000 subsidized loan. If they invest the money in the base, they get a bonus.

"We make sure that their bonus is at least 20 percent. That means if they become shareholders, they can have 10,000 yuan a year, which is a lot of money for these villagers," Wu said.

Villagers can also lease their land to the company, which provides seed, fertilizer, pesticide and technology. For each mu (about 700 square meters) they can earn 15,000 yuan.

This job has encouraged farmers to work hard to make money, rather than waiting for help from the government, said Wu.

Most of the vegetables from Wu's company go to supermarkets, while about 30 percent of the vegetables go to Jinyuanhong Foods, which supplies meals to more than 100,000 students from more than 400 schools.

Liu Hezhong's grandson is a first-grader, who began getting the meal in September. "I watched the vegetables grow so I know the lunch is safe," Liu said.

The company uses 24,000 kilograms of vegetables and 6,000 kilograms of meat every day. It has nine bases, including the one in Jiecun. As a way to help farmers, the company buys vegetables from them. "They can send their vegetables to the nearest school," said Li Wen, manager of the Xingguo branch of Jinyuanhong.

The trucks carrying food leave the company at 3 a.m. and each truck runs more than 100 kilometers a day. For some remote schools, the company sends ingredients twice a week rather than prepared dishes every day, like Huangsha Village which is two or three hours from Xingguo county seat and Zeng Qinghua is the only teacher, with only five first-graders.

Zeng puts the rice into a cooker, and washes and slices the vegetables during class breaks. She begins cooking at 11:50 a.m., so that students can have lunch at 12:30.

"Before we had free school meals, students had only bread and milk," she said. "They also brought food from home, but being from impoverished families, the food was simple."

Zeng's students do not like potatoes, because they seldom see potatoes in the village. Chen Fengcai, 6, likes cabbage. "I don't like that 'soft leaf'," he said. He does not know that the "soft leaf" is a kind of fungus, but he still eats up everything without leaving even a pepper.

"The more I eat, the taller I will be," he said.

Chen's parents are working as migrant workers, whom he only sees once a year. "When I grow up, I will be able to earn money," he added. "So that I will not have to leave my parents." Endi