The Sweet Taste Of Success
Integrated Rural Development In Xuyi County
Nestled between the River Huai and Lake Hongze, Xuyi County is one of Jiangsu's poorer counties. 90% of the county's population are peasants, many of whom still live below the poverty line. In April 2001, some of Amity's Board of Directors visited an integrated rural development project in the area. Katrin Fiedler, Editor of Amity Newsletter, accompanied them.
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Hu Guiqing with daughter-in-law Sun Cuixia |
Broad smiles greet Amity's board members on their visit to Wangdian Township's strawberry farmers. The look on their beaming faces is project evaluation at its easiest: the villagers are obviously happy. Yet, for Wangdian's peasants, it is only recently that hard times have become a thing of the past.
Big floods in 1991 helped the Amity Foundation discover Xuyi County, a pocket of poverty right on the border of Jiangsu and Anhui provinces. "Amity assisted the flood victims through relief work," recounts Qiu Zhonghui, head of Amity's Rural Development Division. "Local production capacities and peasants' incomes were very low. The area was also poor and backward not only in economic terms. On one mountain, we found a family with nine children."
Amity started to implement some individual projects to improve the peasants' living and production conditions, but the results were less than ideal. "It took us some time to realize that here, only an integrated approach tackling several problems at a time would yield results. Moreover, human development is the most crucial aspect in the poverty alleviation process" Qiu explains. In 1996, an integrated rural development project was started in Wangdian Township, Xuyi County. Wangdian Integrated Rural Development Project includes training programs, an irrigation project with pumping stations, an afforestation project, upgrading of schools and village clinics, a microcredit project and an experimental garden. Through these combined efforts, basic health, education and economic needs are addressed.
Dramatic Increase Of Income
Perhaps Wangdian's most interesting project element is the experimental garden and its strawberry cultivation.
Low agricultural output and the poor quality of local produce in Wangdian were mainly due to ecological constraints. Scarcity of arable land, lack of water and soil erosion hampered agricultural production, and farmers lacked the skills and capital to develop other economic opportunities. In close cooperation with local partners, Amity started to look into agricultural alternatives. Traditional land use tended to aggravate existing ecological problems. The aim was to find a form of agriculture that would be both ecologically sustainable and economically profitable.
Strawberries proved to be the ideal solution. Grown in huge hothouse tents, strawberries can be cultivated from December to June and give high returns over relatively small areas of land. What is more, Wangdian's strawberries are grown without artificial pesticides or fertilizer, winning them official recognition as "organic strawberries." As such, they are sold for six to eight Yuan RMB per kilo [= US$ 0.75 - 1.00] and have proven to be a great hit with China's increasingly health-conscious consumers.
For local farmers, the strawberry project has also proved to be a runaway success. Xu Kaiwen, a 45-year old farmer, reports: "I have four daughters. Three of them are now studying in school. In the past, I always felt so embarrassed to borrow money or ask the school to reduce tuition fees at the beginning of each semester. But this year I have paid everything myself. Since January, I have already earned more than 10,000 Yuan!" Other villagers echo his enthusiasm. Hu Guiqing is a woman in her forties: "Before we started the project, our family income was less than 2000 Yuan [= US$ 250] per year. This strawberry season, I have made more than 10,000 Yuan [= US$ 1,250] from my strawberries." With the strawberries, peasants generate an annual income of 3000 Yuan [= US$ 375] per mu [0.06 hectares] of land, a much higher return than for grain or other crops. The strawberry experiment has been so successful that peasants from neighboring villages have already started emulating Wangdian's strawberry production.
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Villager Zhou Fangrong in one of her six strawberry tents |
In combination with Wangdian Integrated Rural Development Project's other components, Amity's work has changed the face of Wangdian Township over the course of only a few years. Villagers now have access to basic medical care. Thanks to irrigation, in some areas agricultural production has nearly doubled. Farmers make higher profits and feel less vulnerable to natural disasters than in "pre-irrigation" times. Their children all go to school in well-lit buildings with proper equipment.
Peasants First, Cadres Last
Aside from a dramatic improvement in peasants' living conditions, Wangdian's project has yielded a number of equally impressive, though less tangible, results. To begin with, women are now much more economically active than before, a fact which has significantly increased their self-esteem. "In the beginning, I was so afraid of peddling in the streets," 34-year-old Liang Zhengying remembers. Now, she often carries up to 50 kilos of strawberries to nearby markets for sale.
Amity's involvement in Xuyi County has also helped local cadres develop new skills and insights which will be useful in their future developmental efforts on behalf of the people they serve. Through this project, cadres have learned how to carry out projects by themselves using a participatory approach tailored to the real needs of local farmers. Amity provided training opportunities for the cadres in organic production at the China Organic Food Development Centre. The training supplied officials with the necessary background for assisting villagers with their strawberry production. Soon afterwards, under the guidance and monitoring of the Organic Food Development Center, local strawberry cultivation was entirely switched over to organic production. Cadres were immediately supportive of this move.
Wangdian Integrated Rural Development Project has also changed the relationship between peasants and cadres. In recent years, Amity has shifted its emphasis more and more to direct participation of beneficiaries in all areas of project management. Accordingly, part of Amity's training for Wangdian's peasants included a short training course on participatory project appraisal. As a result, the farmers decided to form a strawberry association to make strawberry production and marketing easier and more effective. For local cadres, the idea of an independent association was initially very hard to accept. Now, everybody in Wangdian agrees that the strawberry association enhances both the peasants' organizational capacities and their feeling of common ownership.
"In development work, there is a well-known saying that we should not distribute fish, but rather show the poor how to fish for themselves. Through projects like the one in Wangdian, we have come to realize that it takes even more. We also need to provide more opportunities for people to learn how to sell the fish they catch and even how to raise fish," Qiu Zhonghui comments.
"How did you open up the market for your strawberries?" an Amity board member asks farmer Da Guotai about his marketing strategies. "I gave passers-by samples of strawberries to taste," he grins. In the Chinese countryside, news still travels most effectively by word of mouth.
Facts & Figures:
In cooperation with the local government, Amity supported the following projects in Xuyi County:
- three pumping stations
- a 10 kilometer irrigation ditch
- four village clinics
- improved facilities for two primary schools and one middle school
- 11 primary school libraries
- afforestation of 2500 mu [= 167 hectares approx.] of land with Chinese chestnuts, gingko
trees and pines
- an experimental garden for strawberry cultivation
Total amount invested since 1996: 1.4 million Yuan RMB [= US$ 175,000]
