By Liu Shiyao, Liu Hongchao, People’s Daily
Thanks to the technologies and assistance provided by the local government, Hou Yan, a registered impoverished farmer in northeast China’s Liaoning province, has built a greenhouse and become better-off.
Hou comes from Qingliangshan village. Her family encountered obstacles in 2017 when her husband was confined to bed due to illness, which increased the burden of the schooling of her two children.
To help the villager, Qinglianshan township allocated poverty alleviation funds to set up a vegetable greenhouse for her and invited an expert from the Liaoning Academy of Agricultural Sciences to teach her how to cultivate edible fungi, according to Shi Yu, Party chief of the township.
Zhang Jijun is the expert sent by the academy to the autonomous county. Zhang heads a work team for tech-led poverty alleviation and a team for edible fungi cultivation in the autonomous county. The expert usually drives about two hours to Hou’s greenhouse to teach her cultivation techniques.
“Make sure of enough sunlight and fresh air for the mushrooms to improve the yields and quality,” Zhang told the farmer.
This year, Hou earned about 50,000 yuan ($7,650) from cultivating edible fungi. “Zhang comes to the village two or three times a week to provide guidance and suggestions, and helps me improve my planting skills,” the woman said.
Hou is one of the beneficiaries of China’s poverty alleviation efforts through science and technology, which have been an important part of the country’s strategy of poverty alleviation and development.
China has advanced innovation-driven and targeted poverty alleviation with greater input of science and technology as well as human resources, said Xu Nanping, vice minister of science and technology, at a press conference on Dec. 23.
Xu added that the country has upgraded the mechanisms for the collaboration among different ministries, paired-up assistance between the eastern and western regions, and joint actions among sci-tech management departments at ministerial, provincial, municipal and county levels.
China’ Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) has pushed forward poverty alleviation in targeted poor areas. Since 2012, it has implemented over 250 science and technology projects with the support of key national research and development programs in five targeted impoverished counties, namely, Jinggangshan and Yongxin in Jiangxi province, Pingshan in Sichuan province, as well as Zhashui and Jiaxian in Shaanxi province.
The MOST has invested 280 million yuan in these counties, helped them attract investments totaling about 860 million yuan, and trained more than 8,600 grassroots cadres and technical personnel.
The ministry has continuously improved the innovation capability and industrial competitiveness of the five targeted poor counties and helped them achieve high-quality poverty elimination.
