Indonesian female PhD student learns cattle farming in Wuhan, foreign farmers come to learn agricultural technology

Last weekend, Pakistani young man Farhan squatted in the wheat experimental field of Huazhong Agricultural University, carefully checking the growth of the wheat. Hubei is a major agricultural province in China, with strong agricultural scientific research strength. In recent years, foreign students like Farhan who travel across the ocean to Wuhan to learn to be "farmers" have been increasing year by year. According to statistics from the International Cooperation Office of the Hubei Provincial Department of Science and Technology, nearly 100 international students come to Wuhan each year to seek the "Shennong scriptures."

Indonesian female PhD student learns cattle farming

Sita is an Indonesian PhD student at Huazhong Agricultural University, specializing in dairy cattle breeding technology. One of her daily tasks is milking the cows and collecting samples for research on cow antibodies. She is responsible for milking all 20-plus dairy cows at the Huazhong Agricultural University cattle farm.
"When I first learned to milk, I was very nervous, and the cows were even more nervous than I was. I often made them moo in pain," Sita said with a smile. After she learned to handle their "cow tempers," these 20-plus dairy cows became as docile as sheep. Besides raising cattle, Sita learned to grow vegetables and cooked with the vegetables she grew herself.

In 2010, after Sita received her master's degree from Diponegoro University in Indonesia, she followed her domestic advisor's recommendation and came to Huazhong Agricultural University for further study, under the supervision of Professor Zhang Shujun, a famous Chinese expert in animal genetics. Sita said she plans to return to Indonesia in the future to engage in research on dairy cattle genetic breeding.

Indian girl becomes a "pig herder"

At the pig farming base of the Hubei Academy of Agricultural Sciences at Jinshuizha in Jiangxia, the figure of 28-year-old Indian female PhD student Uma is active. In early 2012, Uma successfully applied online to the Institute of Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Medicine of the Hubei Academy of Agricultural Sciences, engaging in research on molecular breeding of pigs. The laboratory and the pig farm became the "main battlefield" of her weekly work.

Every day at ten in the morning, after arriving at the pig farming base, Uma puts on safety clothing and, after ultraviolet and spray disinfection in the isolation room, enters the facility to check the growth of the breeding pigs. The facility is filled with the pungent smell of feed, disinfectant, and manure, but Uma busies herself without seeming to notice, having already become a competent "pig herder."

"I am full of curiosity about piglets," Uma told reporters. When she first saw tens of thousands of pigs in China, she was stunned, and feeding pigs became one of her hobbies. She signed a two-year contract with the academy, during which her monthly income was more than 4,000 yuan.

Pakistani young man grows wheat

"My country is counting on young people like us to bring back advanced agricultural technology and change our homeland's backward agricultural situation," said Farhan, a Pakistani young man, in the wheat experimental field at Huazhong Agricultural University, expressing his lofty ideal of coming to Wuhan to be a "farmer."

Farhan has been in China for two and a half years and is currently a third-year graduate student in the College of Plant Science and Technology at Huazhong Agricultural University, majoring in crop genetics and breeding. His research direction is wheat genetic breeding.
Last November, Farhan and his classmates sowed wheat in the experimental field at Huazhong Agricultural University, entirely by hand without machines. Recently, as the wheat grew, Farhan and his classmates began bagging it with plastic bags and marking it with cards.

Farhan said he likes walking through the green wheat field, playing Pakistani music on his phone while working. "That feeling is wonderful. It is as if I have returned to my homeland, working in the fields of my country."

"Farhan works like crazy when doing experiments," Farhan's classmate Chen Wei told reporters. Whenever the wheat matures, 6,000 to 7,000 wheat samples must be collected and subjected to experimental analysis within a very short time. Farhan works from dawn to dusk, sometimes sleeping only four or five hours a day.