Tea horticulturist Zhang Guang leads tea farmers in Songyang, Zhejiang to transform and prosper

A farmer born and raised in a rural village, he turned acre after acre of open fields into tea gardens wafting with a lingering fresh fragrance, steered tea cultivation onto a path of large-scale, ecological, mechanized and specialized planting, and at the same time led his fellow villagers onto a road to prosperity through "tea." He is Zhang Guang, head of the Mingchun Tea Agricultural Mechanization Professional Cooperative in Songyang County.

As early as 1993, when farmers were still growing the traditional two-season rice crop each year, Zhang Guang had already planted Fuyun No. 3 tea cuttings in his own field in Shang'an Village, Xinxing Town, and amid everyone's skeptical looks he reaped returns several times higher than growing grain. "One year of tea brings the returns of ten years of grain." This taste of success gave Zhang Guang an enormous interest in "working with tea." He guided the village in planting more than 300 mu of barren hills with high-quality, high-yield famous teas such as Anji white tea, Zhongcha 108, Longjing 43 and Wuniuzao, and renovated and eliminated 236 mu of the existing low-yield old tea gardens.

A single flower does not make spring, so Zhang Guang decided to lead the villagers in switching to tea as well. But when it came to planting tea in the open fields, many conservative-minded villagers had all sorts of worries. Zhang Guang slapped his chest and said: "If the tea can't be sold, just send it to my house and I'll buy it all from you, I won't let you lose out..." Persuaded by him, the villagers planted tea one after another. Today the village's tea garden area is nearly 3000 mu, and Shang'an Village has become a famous tea-producing village known far and wide for its high-quality teas.

At the same time, Zhang Guang pays great attention to tea quality and safety. He actively carries out research, demonstration and promotion of new techniques for tea garden pest and disease control such as light trapping and colored-board trapping; for the "yellow board" alone he conducted hundreds of experiments. In 2015, Songyang County's green pest control technology for tea was successfully selected as a national model for crop pest and disease green control technology, becoming a national template. This year, with the help of the Tea Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, he has again carried out research and promotion of non-chemical pesticide control technology for tea pests and diseases, thoroughly solving the problem of pesticide residues in tea and enabling tea gardens to truly achieve ecological, pollution-free cultivation.

In the process of tea production, Zhang Guang found that purely manual picking and processing of tea could no longer keep up with modern agricultural planting. So he took the building of demonstration bases as a foundation, introduced and promoted new tea production and processing equipment, and realized full mechanization of tea production. At present, the village has tea processing sites covering 15000 ten-thousand sq m, with factory buildings of 14100 sq m and a complete range of tea processing machinery and equipment, achieving full mechanization of tea production and processing through mechanical pruning, mechanical picking, mechanical pest control, mechanical plant protection and mechanical processing, which has greatly raised tea production capacity and labor productivity, lowered production costs and labor intensity, and enhanced the market competitiveness of products and the social and economic benefits of the tea industry.

In order to lead more tea farmers through the transformation. In February 2015, the Mingchun Tea Agricultural Mechanization Professional Cooperative founded the province's first field school for tea farmers, with Zhang Guang as principal. This is a farmers' school centered on "tea farmers," using the "field" as the classroom, "tea-growing practice" as the teaching method, and "improving ability" as the ultimate goal. Zhang Guang passes on the experience he has accumulated over so many years of growing tea to tea farmers from various places through field classes, letting tea farmers understand and master new tea varieties and new techniques; at the same time he also conveys concepts such as green, safe and pollution-free to every tea farmer who comes to study. Ultimately these traditional growers are transformed into modern new-type farmers who are educated, technically skilled and capable of running a business.