Farms yield research, experience for Chinese students
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E-mail Xinhua, April 30, 2016
Lots of postgraduate students spend time doing fieldwork, but few actually spend time working the fields.
"Fertilizers should be adjusted based on soil conditions," said Zhang Shuhua, 24, a postgraduate student majoring in plant nutrition at China Agricultural University (CAU). Zhang was collecting soil for lab analysis to help him advise local farmers on fertilization.
Although CAU is based in Beijing, Zhang will spend three years studying for a master's degree at a rural station in neighboring Hebei Province, 400 km away.
The rural stations allow students like Zhang to perform field research on farmers' plots, while farmers gain direct access to advanced farming techniques.
Zhang arrived at the station one month ago and is currently the only student assigned to Wangzhuang Village in Quzhou County. CAU, with the support of local government, set up the station in 2011. A farmer offered his empty house for the station to use free of charge.
Although Zhang grew up in rural Shanxi Province, it took some time for him to get used to the hardships of his new life at the station.
He conquered his fear of living alone, has learned to cook from scratch with the help of the Internet, and tries to make friends with the locals. "I have visited 60 of the 200 households over the past month," he said
In addition to getting to know the farmers, he must also become familiar with their plots of land. "There are no boundary markers, so I have to count the ridges to determine whose lot it is," he said.
The station has adopted 500 mu of villagers' crops as a demonstration lot and gives them recommendations on proper seeds and planting techniques. Farmers in the area, after seeing the yields rise on the demonstration lot, have started copying the practices.
Farms in the village yield two crops, wheat and corn, per year. Thanks to the station's technical assistance, production per mur (0.067 hectare)has increased from 900 kg to 1,300 kg per mu over the past five years.
Wang Yongjun, a local, said the students have changed their farming routines.
"We used to water the wheat twice after the Lantern Festival. The students told us to water only once and a little later. That has reduced costs and raised the production," he said.
Other skills villagers have learned include deep plowing, precision seeding, and proper timing for weeding.
Praises as a "highly educated university student," Zhang is often asked to help with the homework of local children in his spare time.
"We like them every much, and even recommend some of them to become Party head of the village," villager Wang Junshan said of the station's students.
So far, the CAU has established 74 science and technology stations across the country, with around 100 postgraduate students stationed among them.
From spring to fall, students stay at the stations, monitoring the crops, training farmers and performing field research. In winter, they return to the campus for courses and to meet with instructors and each other.
Instructors require the students to write journals, recording their work and life for review.
Zhang Hongyan, an instructor with CAU, said unlike in Western countries, where farmers with large plots are enthusiastic about increasing profitability through technology, Chinese farmers are more hesitant as the plots they are assigned are too small to bring in high incomes.
Under the circumstances, the station has served to unite science and farming, he said.
He recalled the first station was founded in 2009 in Baizhai Township of Quzhou County. The site was picked as the CAU and the township had a relationship dating back to 1973, when CAU instructors and students, at the central government's urging, headed to the township to help with reclamation of saline and alkaline land.
"We meant to test our findings with the station and assigned some postgraduate students who weren't taking classes at the time to carry out the research," he said.
Originally, only men were sent there for safety reasons, but women later volunteered. Currently, women outnumber men.
Instructors originally worried about the students' academic progress, as they had much less time on campus with their advisors, but to their surprise, they found students stationed in rural areas outperformed those studying in classrooms.
"With first-hand data and grassroots experience, the students achieved more in research and wrote more papers," he said, adding most of the top scholarships in the Resources and Environmental Sciences School were awarded to students stationed in the field.
The novel teaching methods have attracted international attention. Scholars and experts from the United States, France, Germany, Britain, Australia and Indonesia have visited the stations, some more than once.
"They were very surprised to see scientists in a farm field rather than sitting in the lab, which helps with application of advanced technologies," he said.
In addition to CAU, more than 10 universities and research institutions, such as Henan Agricultural University and Inner Mongolia Agricultural University, have also established rural stations.
Eyeing wider coverage of science and technology stations, Zhang Hongyan advised the education authorities to issue guidelines making field education programs compulsory and also urged agricultural enterprises to join in.
"Companies should fulfill their social responsibility to spread advanced technology across the country," he said.
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