New-style farmer training meets with a cold reception: more than 20% of farmers say they are not interested
Training must be based on farmers' needs, not on assumptions
In recent years, the central government has issued a series of documents to strengthen farmer training. This year's No. 1 Central Document clearly stated: “Actively develop agricultural vocational education and vigorously cultivate new-style professional farmers.”
From July to September 2014, relying on the “Hundred Villages Observation” project platform, the China Rural Research Institute of Central China Normal University conducted a special survey on “the implementation of new-style farmer training” among 6,771 farming households in 262 villages and 130 new-style rural communities across 31 provinces nationwide.
About ten years ago, a township in Ningde City, Fujian Province, began promoting farmer training. A village cadre, Lin De (pseudonym), said that in earlier years each farmer who attended was given 50 yuan, but in a village with a permanent population of more than 1,500, fewer than 20 people attended the training.
“The county agricultural bureau and labor bureau sent us trainers, and they came with a TV and DVD. On the day of training, the village cadres had to go clean the primary school classroom early in the morning, then go to the shop in the village equipped with a loudspeaker and shout three or five times.” Recalling past training sessions, Lin De said, “The higher-ups had requirements, the farmers did not care, and the village cadres were anxious for nothing.”
It was the same elsewhere. Wu Qingguo (pseudonym), an accountant in a village in Ji'an City, Jiangxi Province, reported that his village's silkworm training was tied to the market conditions of that year. “Training is held every year, and those who come are mostly large silkworm-raising households. In years with good market conditions everyone is happy to come, but when the market is bad farmers are unwilling to attend.”
When farmers have inherited skills and accumulated experience in certain areas, they are often unwilling to attend related training again. Liu Erbao (pseudonym), a large silkworm-raising household in the village, told reporters, “We raise silkworms several times a year, and we are masters at how to prevent disease; there is no need to attend.” Training on how to grasp market conditions and reduce breeding risks is what they relatively need, yet it has never been held.
The survey results show that 23.52% of farmers directly said they are not interested in the training content, and 9.95% thought the training content was too difficult and hard for them to understand. In short, the single training content provided by the government does not match farmers' need for training in many aspects of knowledge. Farmers hope the training will be broader, easier to understand, and more targeted.
Chen Jie, a village cadre in Nanchang County, Jiangxi Province, said frankly that there are still many gaps in farmer training in their village. There are very few training opportunities for young people around twenty years old with a low educational level and for people engaged in freshwater aquaculture and poultry farming. “Take our town as an example. The town has more than 1,000 fish-farming households. If the government could take the lead and organize relevant training, we could exchange breeding experience, scale, and market conditions with one another. That would truly benefit us.”
Starting in 2012, farmers' attitude toward training in Lin De's village underwent a major change. “Before, they would not come even if you paid them; now they take the initiative to ask the county to send technical backbone staff to guide them, and the number of training participants has gone from a dozen or so to fifty or sixty.”
Lin De's village is a major tea-growing village, and farmers' main income comes from picking tea. At first, they could grow tea well with traditional methods, but as training deepened, more and more farmers realized the importance of technology. “After the tea leaves are picked, how to fertilize and how to cultivate the tea trees, the technicians have a set of scientific methods. After training, the village's tea output has increased in the past two years.”
Because he attended training every year as a village cadre, Lin De also became “half an expert”. Whenever new tea leaves grow, rice seedlings are transplanted, or pigs are ready for market, neighboring households always come to him to ask when it is most appropriate to fertilize, irrigate, or send pigs to market.
Deng Dacai, executive dean of the China Rural Research Institute of Central China Normal University, pointed out that only training that meets farmers' needs can be truly implemented and play a real role. “Training must be based on farmers' needs and cannot be arranged based on assumptions.”