Well-educated talents aid the poor with scientific farming

NANCHANG, May 6 (Xinhua) -- Oil-tea camellia seedlings farmer Yang Leren, together with other growers in his village, walked along ridges and furrows to weed a breeding field and put the weeds in his basket, being careful not to disturb the seedlings.

Yang lives in Fenyi County in east China's Jiangxi Province. The 46-year-old man used to be a migrant worker but was incapacitated when he got his hands crushed in 2014. His family was plunged into poverty from then on.

To help poor households increase their incomes, the county has been promoting oil-tea camellia seedlings planting since 2016 by introducing a scientific research team from the Experimental Center of Subtropical Forestry under the Chinese Academy of Forestry.

That was when Dr. Zhong Qiuping, a member of the research team, set up his "poverty alleviation workshop" in Yang's village, only a five-minute walk to the breeding field.

"Relocating the workshop to the fields provides technical assistance to local farmers on one hand, and facilitates our research on the other," Zhong said.

When Zhong's team decided to promote their research results to help lift the villagers out of poverty and increase income in 2018, the village cadres recalled that Yang's family was the first that came to mind.

Yet Yang did not buy it in the beginning since he did not think that he could increase income or even shake off poverty by growing oil-tea camellia seedlings. "At that time, our rice harvest barely made ends meet."

Yang was finally convinced when Dr. Zhong told him that the team had increased the graft living rate to over 80 percent for large-scale planting by optimizing the seed grafting technology after years of research.

Yang and his wife later tried to grow one mu (about 0.067 hectares) of oil-tea camellia seedlings in 2018 and earned more than 50,000 yuan (about 7,082 U.S. dollars) within a year.

The couple doubled their planting area the next year by using the interest-free loan for poor households and saw their earnings doubled.

Tan Xinjian, director of the experimental center, said in addition to technical assistance, the workshop also helps farmers promote sales, with high-yield seedlings cultivated in Fenyi being sold to 14 provinces across the country.

At present, the total planting area of oil-tea camellia seedlings in Fenyi has reached 67,000 mu and will be expanded to 100,000 mu within five years, according to Li Jun, head of the county forestry bureau.

Zhong's research team in his workshop has been growing over the past few years. "Four of our 17 members hold doctorate degrees and five hold master's degrees."

As oil-tea camellia seedling planting becomes an important industry for local farmers to increase their income, more than 300 of whom have mastered the cultivation technique and gone outside the county to provide technical assistance for their peers in many other places across the country.

With the help of the local government, Yang's family have built a two-story house. "I will pay off my loans and further have the planting area doubled this year," he said.