Wuhan

On the afternoon of Sunday the 28th I flew from Guangzhou to Wuhan, the capital of Hubei Province.  First on the agenda for Hubei was a dinner on Sunday night with many of the staff from the local soil and fertilizer station, and the Provincial Agricultural Demonstration Center.

A picture of the demonstration center.  Handily, it was printed on the side of the tissue boxes at the conference table.  

We got a reasonable start on Monday morning, about 8:30, and drove a while until we entered a small little oasis.  I describe it like this, because most of the farms that we have seen are tiny plots of land between buildings, roads, ponds (especially in Hubei), houses or on hillsides.  They are not rare, in fact they are the most common land feature, they are just mostly small groups of 5-20 1/4 acre to 1 acre fields in a patchwork around and between these other land features.  We entered the facility and after winding our way down several very narrow roads, and across some bridges, we went into the central building and into the conference room.  This facility hosts over 20,000 visitors a year from around the world, and around the Province (but is geared mostly to farmers from around the province to come and learn different farming techniques, and to hear about different crops.

Like many of the farm areas here, all the roads between
fields and all the ditches, and most of the dikes are concrete.

This is the second crop of rice of
the season.

A field soon to be planted like the
one on the right.  Notice the tree
plantings along the main water ditches
on the left.

Potatoes grown not from seed potatoes, but from tissue
culture in a lab to assure that they are bacteria and
virus free.

Papaya trees.  Note the long hills on
which the trees are planted, as I
said, it rains a lot here.  Also note
the white clover that is planted across
the entire ground. They mulch it into the soil
twice a year, and it fixes nitrogen and
prevents many weeds year round.

A new variety of disease resistant cotton.  I'll show you
more cotton later - they use it as a default crop, if
and area is too small for something else, just
plant a cotton plant or two.

This demonstration farm is organic.
What you see here is the primary
form of pest control.  Two lights
above two trays of soapy water,
powered by a solar panel.

They grow 13 different kinds of fruits, countless vegetables, rice, many different aquatic species, hogs.  All together they have more than 140 different species of plants they are raising.  Note that this is not an experimental farm.  It acts instead more for an extension purpose - it takes the research done, applies that to normal, real world farming conditions, and places it on display for all to see.  It is run by the local Provincial (state) government and takes about 30 farmers to run.  I will add that like much of China, it is also very well manicured with roses planted along the roadways, small ornamental islands among the aquaculture ponds, and flowers planted throughout.  As you can see from the pictures that follow, it was raining.  But that didn't stop us from a great tour of the facility.  And one other important note - the entire farm is organic.  Its not the same as our organic, but very similar standards, with a strict three year process that farmers must go through to be allowed to use the organic label.

This is lettuce.  Notice the ditches - it rains a lot here.

This facility helped to illustrate for me that while china has a 5,000 year old history of agriculture, and while there are many traditional methods that they use, China is putting its money into advancing all sectors of their economy.  And agriculture isn't just a sector of their economy.  Its not like construction or electronic manufacturing - for them it is a matter of National Security.  They have 1.3 billion people to feed, and they need every improvement they can get to that, not just with the most food they can get, but with a variety that knows no bounds, and with an ever increasing focus on food safety that we hear very little about in the US (we hear the problems, but just like what happens in the US, the Chinese government is responding to those problems and making changes.)

Next was a short cultural side trip to the Yellow Crane Tower.  I linked the wikipedia entry, and here are some pictures, with captions.

many poets visited this tower and the countless towers that
preceded it, destroyed by fire and war.  Most wrote poems
to help to share their impressions, three famous poets are:
Li Bai, perhaps China's most famous poet; Cui Hoa, he
wrote his a little while ago back in the 700's; and finally
someone just as famous, although maybe not for his
poetry (but i have to admit, it does seem pretty good)
Chairman Mao Zedong.

The Yellow Crane Tower

My favorite place at the tower, but down near the start.
The wings (the end bits on the roofs) of the tower are supposed
to represent a goose taking flight.  This is the goose lake.

Another tower in the distance, from the top of the Yellow
Crane Tower.

Tuesday we started around 7:30 and drove for a while out into the countryside to visit a farming area.  One striking thing about China, most every place I have been, is the landscaping.  I chose this picture to the right for a reason.  It is decidedly not one of China's "pretty" roads, of which there are many.  In fact it was a pretty bad road, in a more dilapidated part of the drive.  But look at the island in the road, and the trees on the far side of the road.  Everything here is landscaped.  The cities and villages have more landscaping than almost any place I have been in the United States.  This is the side of China we don't hear about.  Yes, the air is often smoggy (although it often actually foggy or a combination of both) and some parts are run down, and even just plain ol' dirty, but there are plantings that are maintained and well kept on every major road anywhere.  Landscaping in every median and island, and 50-100 feet out on both sides of the road everywhere.  I think they have more landscaping in 100 miles of roadway than the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has on every highway we have, combined.  China is making a serious effort to clean things up, and a major part of that, both visually and in the air, is the landscaping.

Add caption

On the way there, we passed many, many villages and fields.  Its amazing to see how over the years, every little bit of land has been utilized for farming.  I'll be frank, when you have 260 million farmers, farming very small pieces of land, it isn't hard.  The village controls the land, and assigns the farmer a piece of land.  The farmer then has tenure on that land, it is theirs as long as they want to farm it.  But they don't own it.  It is not an asset they can sell (although they can rent it out to another farmer.)  They cannot pass it on to their children (although that isn't so much a problem as the family gets around 1 mu (2 acres) per person, kids included, and that means the kids have their own land to use if they wish to farm it.  

But if the kids move away, or the family wishes to leave, they can't just sell the land or rent it out, living in the village is what gives you the right to your own piece of land.  If all there is in the village is a small piece of land, that is what you get.  

Sorry for the graininess, we were moving fast.  That grey
on the bottom right is the concrete road.  Those plants
are rapeseed planted in the two foot wide strip
between the concrete roadway and the ditch in the
rice field.

This is one of the major
waterways through this large patch
of fields.  Notice the landscaping
(I think arbrovite) on the sides, and
the cotton planted between them.

Very cool small rice combine.  It is two ladies who are
professional harvesters.  They own the harvester and
do contract work for other farmers.  One drives, and one
sits on the side and fills the bags with rice as it is harvested.

We had a great conversation between these
two farmers.  See below.

I finally had a chance to spend some time speaking with some farmers here in China.  It was interesting to say the least.  This man is "retired" which only means that he is past 60 so he gets a retirement benefit from the government.  It doesn't mean he doesn't work though.  His retirement is 55 yuan a month (right now 6.25 yuan = 1 USD, so that works out to about $8.80 US a month).  He still farms though on his 1 mu (about 2 acres.)  He grows two crops of rice each year, this being a climate that allows for double cropping of wheat.  10 years ago it would take he and his wife 2 months of hard work to harvest one crop and plant the next (doing that twice a year.)  The rest of the year he might work 10 hours a week in the field.  Now, with machinery he still only has his two acres, but it take just him one week of work, mostly from a tractor, to harvest and plant the next crop.  He bought the machinery, both plow and harvester for around 120,000 yuan combined and rents them out for 300 yuan/mu for the harvester and around 60 yuan/mu for the plow.  The equipment costs more than that, but for anyone who wants to buy it, the government pays 1/3 of the price for any agricultural equipment they buy.  Pretty eye opening stuff.  

I'm not sure what she had in those bags, but notice that she
has one up front across the center bar of the bike as well.

On the way back I got two pictures that I think exhibit pretty well something that I am constantly amazed by here.  These people can get more "stuff" on a bike (motor or pedal) than I think I can get in the back of our medium sized SUV!

You can't see them all, but this guy, parked at a red light
has three more boxes down the other side of the bike
and that's another between his legs.  Plus the front
basket was stuffed full of stuff.

All right folks, That's all for now. The day ended with a flight to Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan Province teaser for next time - Giant Pandas aren't really Panda's, they are bear, but red pandas, well they are actually pandas.  They are both darn cute though.