Villagers tap turnaround from farming, industry to grow prosperity

Editor's note: With China set to meet its goal this year of eliminating extreme poverty before next year's 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China, this series looks at the efforts of different areas of the country to erase poverty and improve livelihoods.

When farmer Ren Lianjun switched from growing the angelica and astragalus Chinese medicinal plants to lily bulbs, he knew it wasn't going to be easy.

The lily bulbs, valued for their use to relieve coughs, dry throats and other respiratory ailments, would take three years to cultivate before any real rewards could be reaped.

But Ren, 52, now knows it was well worth the wait.

"I've made a fivefold increase in yield, up to 5,000 yuan ($736) a year for every 0.67 hectare, compared to previous common crops like corn, potatoes or angelica," he said.

The farmer's gains from investing in the future reflect those made at the broader level in his home village of Yuangudui in Weiyuan county of Dingxi, in Northwest China's Gansu province. As part of a nationwide poverty alleviation drive, major investments to leverage the climate, soil and other local advantages have allowed Yuangudui villagers to work together, shed their poverty label and upgrade their economy, becoming a model for others on the country's development road to a moderately prosperous society.

Ren started converting his 1.34-hectare plot to grow lily bulbs six years ago, after agriculture specialists from provincial capital Lanzhou identified the suitability of the area's physical conditions for growing the valuable crop and transferred some of their expertise to local farmers. He now leads the charge to bank on lily bulb cultivation, himself renting more land for the crop and training many of the villagers increasingly involved in farming nearly one-fifth of about 370 hectares of the area's arable land for the bulbs.

Together with wages from his 26-year-old son working outside the village, the lily bulb industry helped boost Ren's four-member household income last year to about 100,000 yuan, a life-changing difference from the time before anti-poverty measures rolled out when they had to scrap by with common crops.

"We try to help each other in the village now with these new opportunities, in line with traditional community values," Ren said.

About 2 million yuan is also being invested on a processing plant to upgrade the villagers' lily bulb production and tap better logistics networks as well as e-commerce platforms to further raise incomes from the bulbs, township head Wang Xiaoming said.

Spurred by such encouragement, incentives and subsidies to farm better-yielding crops, including morel mushrooms that also tap the area's milder and moister climate, more Yuangudui's farmers like Ren are grouping together to reap the rewards of progress, development and industry, as the village moves firmly from the poverty it experienced less than a decade ago.