High-Yield Creation Lets Smallholder Grain Growers Join Forces into a Fist
On the afternoon of September 22, in the stretch of rice paddies in Chunhua Mountain Village, Chunhua Town, Changsha County, Hunan Province, Wang Guisan, head of the Wawulong group, and farmers managing irrigation were checking the water-saturation of the rice. The seedlings were already knee-high and it was exactly the grain-filling stage, so Wang Guisan was especially attentive.
“This rice, this year one mu of land can yield 1300 jin without any problem.” Wearing a straw hat and taking a drag on a cigarette, Wang Guisan told the reporter that he had planted a total of more than 11 mu of land, belonging to the category of smallholder grain growers. Because the agricultural department's guidance in all aspects was in place, farming had become much more convenient over the years, so he had not transferred his land out, and this year everything he planted was double-cropping rice.
“We have high-yield creation here, so even farming on our own we can achieve pretty good yields.” Wang Guisan said, “In the past, when there was no high-yield creation, the difference was huge. The late rice used to be only eight or nine hundred jin, now it is all over 1000.”
Why is there such a change? Wang Guisan told the reporter that first, the seed varieties were all much better than before. “With good varieties, the county subsidizes half for us. You see, the variety planted in this field is C Liangyou 396, a super rice variety. Our group all planted this variety for late rice this year. The seed for one mu of land costs more than 40 yuan, and about 20 yuan can be subsidized.”
“We do manual seedling throwing. As for management, how to control pests, how to spray pesticides, the agricultural technology station sends pest and disease information to us. Wang Guisan has grown rice for decades, and he told the reporter that insects reproduce very quickly, and in one or two days they can ruin the seedlings, so within four or five days the rice must all be sprayed once, otherwise it will become a disaster. Wang Guisan said that many farmers now still work in the town, so it is impossible for them to come to the fields every day, but the agricultural technicians at the town agricultural technology station often come to the fields to observe whether there are insects or disease, and all of this can be grasped at any time, which gives the rice farmers very good guidance.
“They come once every three to five days, and at key times they come every day. This is a relatively key time. We say ‘people eat mooncakes, insects eat seedlings’. By the time of the Mid-Autumn Festival, it is also the most critical time for pest control.” Wang Guisan said, “Two or three days in advance, the people from the agricultural technology station send us the information, when to spray, what to spray, the materials are distributed to every household, and sex pheromone lures are also provided free of charge.” Wang Guisan said that therefore everyone's enthusiasm for growing grain is very high.
Besides Wang Guisan's more than ten mu of land, more than 1200 mu of fields in Chunhua Mountain Village have all been included in the high-yield creation scope, with unified application of improved varieties, unified high-yield technology, unified soil testing and formulated fertilization, unified green pest and disease prevention and control, unified technical training, and unified mechanical plowing and harvesting, clenching smallholder grain growing into a fist and connecting it into stretches, providing strong support for these smallholders to be able to grow high-yield fields.
In recent years, Hunan Province has promoted a batch of key technologies focused on high-yield creation, centralized seedling raising, and mechanized production for stabilizing area, improving quality, and increasing efficiency. The coverage rate has continued to rise, effectively promoting the transformation of grain production toward seeking grain from science and technology and from mechanization. This year, the field area of centralized early rice seedling raising in the province reached 11 million mu, an increase of 1 million mu over last year. Grain, oil, and cotton high-yield creation was actively carried out, and 641 ten-thousand-mu demonstration plots for grain, oil, and cotton crops such as early rice, middle rice, and late rice under the Ministry of Agriculture were implemented, radiating and driving the province's grain, cotton, and oil high-yield creation area to reach more than 15 million mu. Since the beginning of this year, apart from drought and flood disasters in some local areas, the main grain crops have achieved stable and increased production, and it is expected that the total annual grain output will show a stable increase pattern.