Xinjiang Barkol's level of agricultural mechanization reaches 88%
(Xinjiang Daily News) In the scorching heat of late July, the reporter came to the home of He Xuechun, a villager of Huazhuangzi Village, Huayuan Township, Barkol Kazakh Autonomous County. Outside his yard, windbreak forests grow densely, and a gentle breeze brings coolness. In the yard are parked all kinds of agricultural machinery, mowers, hay rakes, high-horsepower tractors and so on. “The 904 high-horsepower tractor was bought only recently, and the government subsidized half of it, solving a big problem for us.” He Xuechun happily told the reporter.
In recent years, in order to reduce farmers' labor intensity and promote agricultural efficiency and farmers' income, Barkol has taken “prospering machinery and enriching the people” as an opportunity, established the concept of “serving large-scale agriculture, developing large-scale agricultural machinery”, and gradually developed from mechanization of a single link to mechanization of the whole process before, during and after production, introducing high-horsepower, new-type machinery with high technological content. Some imported foreign agricultural machinery with high technological content and low fuel consumption, such as Claas balers and John Deere combine harvesters, have also successively settled in Barkol. The promotion and use of these new agricultural machines and tools provide strong support for high and stable yields of Barkol's crops. At present, the county's comprehensive level of agricultural mechanization reaches 88%.
Starting from 2005, Barkol implemented the national agricultural machinery subsidy policy. In the past two years, with the increase in subsidy funds for agricultural machinery purchases, farmers and herders' enthusiasm for buying agricultural machinery has continued to rise. From 2005 to the present, Barkol has secured a total of more than 16 million yuan in funds, including 13.33 million yuan in national subsidy funds and 3.65 million yuan in subsidy funds at all levels, subsidizing 1,234 various agricultural machines and tools, benefiting 754 farming and herding households. This year, the county secured more than 3 million yuan in various agricultural machinery subsidy funds.
The continuous improvement of agricultural mechanization has promoted large-scale land management and also liberated the rural labor force. Surplus rural labor has gone out to work and engaged in the secondary and tertiary industries, promoting farmers' income growth. Li Yanjun, a villager of Huazhuangzi Village, farms more than 60 mu of land. Before purchasing agricultural machinery, he had to spend nearly a month on planting. Now, he finishes planting his own land in one week, and in the remaining time helps households without agricultural machinery with their planting, earning more than 500 yuan a day.
In June 2008, Barkol established an agricultural machinery association, and in 2009, two agricultural machinery professional cooperatives were successively established. After the cooperatives were established, they were conducive to the promotion of agricultural machinery and the introduction of new agricultural machinery technologies and new machines, and farmers and herders' awareness of safety services for operations was also significantly raised.
At present, the level of machine plowing in Barkol County reaches 100%, the level of mechanized sowing reaches 95%, and the level of machine harvesting reaches 92%. In 2009, Barkol's total revenue from agricultural mechanization operations exceeded 104 million yuan, realizing a profit of 31.1 million yuan.