The per capita income for farmers reached 4,690 yuan (about US$586) in south China's Guangdong Province in 2005, a rise of 4.5 percent year on year, according to local government statistics.

Wages gained through non-farming sectors accounted for 54.6 percent of the farmers' total income, indicating that farming is not the only source of income for local farmers, said Ou Guangyuan, deputy secretary of the Guangdong Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC).

Ou said, the provincial government has made great efforts to help farmers raise their income through development of highly efficient farming. Local farmers are also trained in practical skills with which they can find jobs in the industrial and service sectors.

Between 2003 and 2005, Guangdong spent 111 million yuan (US$13.87 million) on training farmers. A total of 1.475 million rural laborers found jobs in the industrial and service sectors over the past three years.

Currently, the province has 15.24 million rural laborers working in the industrial and service sectors, accounting for 50.4 percent of the province's total rural labor force.

Ou said, Guangdong would keep on training farmers in the coming years, and by 2010, more than 20 million rural laborers, or 70 percent of the province's total, will work in the industrial and service sectors.

(Xinhua News Agency February 10, 2006)