Training courses must suit farmers' tastes
Recently, the farmer training classroom of the Liuxianzhuang Village Committee in Yutian County, Hebei Province, was bustling with activity. More than 50 people, including all members of the council of the Liuxianzhuang Fuda Farmers' Professional Cooperative, large-scale growers, and some villagers, came enthusiastically to participate in training on integrated pest management technology.
This training was a farmer service activity carried out by the Hebei research group of the Ministry of Agriculture's "stay grounded, understand the people's conditions" practical exercise activity. The research group made careful preparations, and the training content was rich and varied. In particular, an animated promotional film on integrated crop pest management and scientific pesticide use was shown on site, telling stories about crop disease prevention and pest control and science popularization in animated form, which was widely recognized and warmly welcomed by the villagers.
"In the past, I couldn't understand much of what the teachers on stage said, but today I basically understood everything shown, and in the future when crops get sick again I'll try it according to what was shown above," said villager Bian Jiuyun.
During the training, the research group introduced to the villagers the situation of specialized integrated pest management of crop diseases and insect pests, which the state is vigorously promoting, and displayed pictures of integrated pest management service teams, ground and aerial plant protection machinery, and other equipment, mobilizing the cooperative to develop standardized integrated pest control operations and services to promote cost savings, efficiency improvement, and income growth.
"Considering that there are many types of pests and diseases and the technology is complex, we contacted the county plant protection station and the cooperative to establish contact methods such as email and mobile phone multimedia messaging. During the key periods of pest and disease control, pest and disease forecast warnings and control technical plans are promptly transmitted to the village and to individuals, promoting the implementation of integrated pest management measures in the cooperative and in the fields," Guo Naying, a member of the research group, told reporters.
In order to guide villagers to adopt advanced and efficient plant protection machinery and control technologies, the research group also specifically contacted the National Agricultural Technology Extension Service Center and the Yutian County Plant Protection Station, and donated 5 hybrid-powered mist sprayers and 10 boxes of high-efficiency low-toxicity rodenticides and 100 bait stations to the cooperative and the village.
The Yutian County Agriculture Bureau, the plant protection station, and the village committee also attached great importance to this training, discussing the training schedule with the research group, preparing expert report courseware, arranging training technicians, and transporting machinery and equipment. They also proactively shared their experience in training farmers. For example, training should be arranged as much as possible in the morning and end before 10 o'clock, lectures should use more colloquial language, and the time should not be too long. "We learned a lot of practical experience from the frontline. Arranging farmer training cannot be based on assumptions," Chang Xueyan, a member of the research group, told reporters.
"A two-hour farmer training session is a touchstone for staying grounded. It is not the familiar scene of government agency cadre training, with no administrative discipline constraints or mandatory notices. It depends on whether you are dedicated to serving farmers, whether you have considered farmers' living habits, and whether your lecture can keep the farmer audience. If you lecture poorly, farmers will yawn, talk, and might just put on their coats and go home. This training for farmers also taught us a lesson ourselves," said Fan Hongming, head of the research group.