Rice-planting farmers in China have long been involved in laborious and tiresome work to ensure a good harvest for the nation's staple food.
But is there a way to liberate the farmers from their complex manual work? The answer is definitely yes, as the mechanization of agriculture in parts of China shows.
Yingying brings us a closer look at the changes that agricultural machinery has brought to farmers in eastern China's Changzhou city.
Rice-transplanting time has arrived and agricultural machines have begun the work in Changzhou.
Li Yongyou, a local rice farmer, is happy he has been exempted from the labour-intensive rice-transplanting work.
"All the agricultural work is now done by machines. I asked a rice-transplanting machine company to transplant rice shoots for me. Now planting rice requires little manual work. Sometimes, I only come to the rice-fields to inspect the irrigation conditions."
Li Yongyou had been following the traditional way in planting rice before 2002 as few agricultural machines were available at that time. Therefore, cultivating the land, transplanting rice shoots and harvesting, all these tasks required intensive manual work.
Fortunately, with government subsidies, local farmers have turned to agricultural machines for help, cultivating paddy-fields of thousands of acres. Some farmers have even established businesses to provide agricultural machines rental service.
Li Chen runs one such company, which has 25 rice-transplanting machines, dozens of tractors and other types of machines.
Still a farmer, Li Chen started utilizing rice-transplanting machines in 2003. Afterwards, he made a comparison between the output total of hand-transplanted rice and that planted by machines.
"Across 9 hectares of land, I transplanted rice shoots in an area of 7 hectares with machines. The rest was transplanted by hand. With similar field management and the same amount of fertilizer, the output of machine-transplanted rice per hectare outnumbered that of hand-transplanted rice by 1,200 kilograms. So after that, more and more farmers asked me to transplant rice shoots with machines in their paddy-fields."
With the words of local farmers in mind, Li Chen began expanding his business by purchasing more types of agricultural machines, like rice harvesters.
His machines are now working on more than 400 hectares of farm land. As a result, his service company makes more than 200,000 yuan, or about 30,000 US dollars, each year.
Li Chen appreciates the government subsidies he received while purchasing agricultural machines.
"Actually, government subsidies covered a major part of the cost of agricultural machines. For example, a walking rice-transplanting machine sells for 15,600 yuan, but with government subsidies, I spent only a little more than 4,000 yuan to buy it."
Li Chen plans to buy another five rice-transplanting machines this year.
But he is not the only person who benefited from the policy of promoting the mechanization of agriculture across the country.
Since 2004, China's central government has earmarked special funds to subsidize farmers to buy agricultural machines. Moreover, local governments have also invested in the projects of promoting the use of farm machinery.
Recently, the central government announced an allocation of 10 billion yuan for agricultural machinery subsidies this year. The amount is two and a half times that allocated in 2008.
With regard to Changzhou, the city will receive nearly 20 million yuan from the central and Jiangsu provincial governments. Furthermore, the city government itself will allocate another five million yuan as subsidies to local farmers.
Local official Mao Jianyuan explains how the subsidy policy will be implemented within Changzhou.
"For each walking rice-transplanting machine in Changzhou, the provincial government will subsidize 3,000 yuan. Meanwhile, our city government will give 1,500 yuan for each machine within the richer areas of our city. But for the poorer areas, the city government will subsidize 2,000 yuan for each machine."
For the convenience of farmers, the subsidized money will go directly to companies selling this equipment. So farmers can directly purchase a machine at a discounted price.
"For example, the price of a rice-transplanting machine is 15,600 yuan. With 3,000 yuan from the provincial government and 2,000 yuan from the city government, farmers will need to bring 10,600 yuan to buy it from a designated company."
Figures from the agricultural bureau of Changzhou show that the city owns 276,000 sets of agricultural machines. Among them, there are nearly 5,400 rice-transplanting machines and 2,000 combine harvesters.
At the moment, more than 90 percent of the rice-planting work in Changzhou is done by machines.
As agriculture mechanization has achieved a certain level in the city, many farmers have transferred to work to other sectors of the economy.
Zhang Yaogang, the vice mayor of Changzhou, elaborates.
"Agriculture mechanization has liberated farmers from their land and made it possible for them to work in secondary industries. As a result, farmers' incomes have increased."
Zhang says that each year many of the city's 20,000 to 30,000 farmers are becoming wage earners or businessmen thanks to agricultural mechanization.
Meanwhile, farmers who still plant rice can now plant a large area of paddy-fields with improved output thanks to the application of these machines. As a result, their incomes are also rising. Last year, rural residents in Changzhou enjoyed an average income of more than 8,000 yuan, nearly 70 percent more than the country's average.
The news come from www.bossgoo.com
