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A new generation of tobacco farmers are changing China’s tobacco fields.
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Trenching, deep-plowing, and ridging machines have greatly improved crop yield for farmers.
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All tobacco farmers in Hengyang county now joined a cooperative which helped them reach higher planting scale levels.
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Efforts of new farmers utilizing new farming techniques and technology have paid off.
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New farmers apply their understanding of new agriculture methods to field management for better yields.
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Drones hovering above tobacco fields in Duntao village is a common sight.
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Local governments and tobacco companies help provide new farmers with knowledge and training.
The concept of new farmers has become popular in recent years.
Simply put, ‘new farmers’ is an organic integration of the Internet and the issues related to agriculture, rural areas, and farmers. Compared with traditional farmers, new farmers use the internet as a tool, possess internet thinking, and serve the fields of agriculture, rural areas, and farmers. Examples of this include college students returning to their hometowns to raise pigs with modern methods and urban white-collar workers returning to the countryside to sell goods through livestream marketing on social medial platforms for the villagers. These new farmers with new ideas, new concepts, new methods, and new technologies are increasingly returning to their hometowns to start businesses.
Nowadays, a large number of new farmers have also emerged in the tobacco industry chain. They strive to drive the development of local industries and expand income channels.
New farmers grow tobacco with new mindset
The empowerment of the internet has made new farmers deeply aware of the importance of “smart agriculture”. They boldly innovate in terms of tobacco growing.
On the lush fields of Duntou village in Shunchang county, Nanping city, Fujian province, several plant protection drones are hovering in the air, attracting many villagers to watch. These are the secret weapons of Li Qiang, a new farmer.
“I am the son of a farmer and grew up in the fields. I want to return to the countryside and go back to the fields, “said Li Qiang. He made up his mind in 2017 to contract 20 mu (1mu=666.7 sq.m.) of land in Duntou village to start planting tobacco.
Li Qiang, energetic and active, not only quickly learned the technical essentials of field management, but also operated various intelligent agricultural machinery. In 2019, Li Qiang successfully contracted 53.8 mu of land in Duntou Village and successively purchased specialized agricultural machinery such as trenching, deep-plowing, and ridging machines, which greatly improved production efficiency and increased the yield of crops by about 20% year-on-year per mu. These intelligent agricultural machines have also made Li Qiang a well-known technological new farmer locally. His farmland planting scale has also developed from the initial 20 mu to the current 101 mu, making him one of the two farmers in the county with a planting scale of over 100 mu.
New farmers bring cultural memes to life
Compared to traditional farmers, new farmers generally have a relatively high cultural level and a deep understanding of agricultural culture since most of them come from rural areas. They apply their knowledge into field management.
Hu Ge, born in Hengyang county, Hengyang city, Hunan province, and graduated from Hunan Agricultural University, resolutely contracted more than 30 mu of land and became a tobacco farmer in 2018, despite his family’s disagreement and classmates’ lack of understanding.
A young graduate who returned home to grow tobacco quickly became a topic of conversation among villagers and spread throughout the county, making Hu Gean an internet celebrity. Faced with the villagers’ teasing, he did not pay any attention and devoted himself to the tobacco fields. During the day, he carefully observed the growth of the tobacco plants, and at night, based on what he had learned and summarized, he actively participated in technical training organized by the tobacco company. He humbly sought advice from local tobacco farmers, constantly supplemented his knowledge and technical shortcomings, and strictly followed the guidance of technicians. His tobacco fields have been designated a lean production demonstration area by Hengyang branch under China Tobacco (Commercial) Corporation. He has also been rated as a technology implementation demonstration household, and has become a well-known tobacco technology expert. Efforts would eventually pay off. Hu Ge became the first person in Hengyang county to earn profits from tobacco planting that year.
In 2020, the local tobacco farmers’ cooperative established a comprehensive service-oriented cooperative association which needed to introduce special technical management personnel. Hu Ge volunteered to lead the service team. He took the lead in establishing specialized service teams for machine farming, plant protection, curing, grading, etc. After several years of development, all tobacco farmers in Hengyang county have joined the cooperative, and the average planting scale of each tobacco farmer has reached over 70 mu, achieving a preliminary combination of family management and scale management.
Cloud-based teaching’ becomes a new model for developing new farmers
For new farmers, local governments and tobacco companies provide them with some preferential policies, measures, and knowledge training for entrepreneurship. In the past, villages relied on loudspeakers and technical personnel leg work to promote grain and tobacco planting policies and explain production knowledge to farmers. At present, with the promotion of internet technology, live-streaming has become the most fashionable way to spread policies and knowledge. Farmers can sit at home and have face-to-face online communication with experts and peers in the live stream-ing room during their leisure time.
Take Liuyang city, Hunan province as an example. Liuyang Tobacco Production Guidance Center actively explores new technology promotion and agricul-tural talent cultivation methods in the new media era, launching the “Golden Leaf Lecture Hall” live studio on its WeChat video channel. Since February 2023, more than 12,000 people have been learning production technology through this way. The cloud-based model is deeply loved by grain and tobacco farmers. Its content is very close to the production needs of farmers. When farmers encounter difficulties in the planting process, they can consult experts on their mobile phones. This is truly timely for grain and tobacco farmers!