Featured crop farming contributes to China’s poverty alleviation

Orah mandarins, a mandarin variety that is very popular in China nowadays, are flowering in Sede village, Nujiang Lisu Autonomous Prefecture of southwest China’s Yunnan province. The plants
are expected to generate profits for local growers this year.
However, when the proposal to establish an Orah mandarin plantation base in the village was
raised by Zhao Qinggang, a member of the poverty-alleviation working team in the village, it
encountered indifference from the villagers, and Li Yihua, who now works for the base and earns
3,500 yuan each month, even encouraged fellow villagers to not to contribute their land to the
base.
What Li did was understandable, as he has his own calculations. The man explained that there
would be at least two penniless years before the plants start fruiting, but his family of seven had to
spend 8,400 yuan each year on food, which was not a small expenditure for him.
Zhao responded that the plantation base needed labors, too, and recommended Li to serve as
management staff at the base, from which Li could even earn more than growing corns.
The poverty-alleviation team later visited the villagers from door to door to explain policies and
clear up misunderstanding. It also invited technicians from a local institution of agricultural
science to explain the feasibility of planting Orah mandarins, in an attempt to dispel the doubts of
the villagers. Thanks to these efforts, the plantation base was established as scheduled.
Now Li is very pleased with his 3,500-yuan monthly income. Apart from management staff like
Li, other villagers who work part-time at the plantation base can also make 120 yuan per day.
In addition to the Orah mandarin plantation base, oolong tea, apple and beekeeping programs are
also popping up in Sede village, lifting 1,708 registered impoverished villagers out of poverty.
“To shake off poverty is only a start, and the annual dividend for villagers who contributed their
land to the base is also a big sum of money,” Zhao noted.
Many regions in China are nowadays relying on plantation, processing industry and e-commerce
to create jobs for impoverished people. The country achieved its poverty reduction target last year,
lifting 11 million people out of poverty. 2020 remains a year of decisive victory for the
elimination of poverty, and the whole country is making more efforts to help the impoverished
find stable ways out of poverty.
The impoverished population in China had been reduced to 5.51 million last year from 98.99
million in 2012, with the poverty headcount ratio dropping to 0.6 percent from 10.2 percent. The
number of people lifted out of poverty each year has been kept above 10 million for 7 consecutive
years. The per capita net income of impoverished households grew to 9,808 yuan last year from
3,416 yuan in 2015, with an average annual growth of 30.2 percent.
Upon completion of the poverty eradication task this year, China will achieve the goals set in the
United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development 10 years ahead of schedule, lifting
around 100 million people out of poverty.
Secretary General of the United Nations said that targeted poverty reduction strategies are the only
way to achieve the ambitious targets set out in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and
China’s experiences can provide valuable lessons to other developing countries.