Hao Fuxia is a farming deputy with the Jilin delegation at the 10th National People’s Congress (NPC). A now famous farmer from northwest China, Hao was elected deputy of the 8th, 9th and 10th NPCs. She also has the honor of being a National Woman Pacesetter and Labor Model for her province.

In a Beijing supermarket yesterday, Hao was somewhat astonished to discover a huge disparity between the price she sells some of her produce at and the price that retailers are selling it for. Noticing that the rice that she supplies to a number of processing enterprises, now labeled “Meihe”, was selling at 7.7 yuan per kg (8.27 yuan equals US$1) in a supermarket there, she was surprised, even shocked because the price that the processing enterprises sell it for is about 2.5 yuan, where ordinary rice fetches just 1.5 yuan per kg. This concerns her and she believes it reflects poorly on the sector.

She is preparing four suggested agricultural policies for the congress, which opens today. These include the subject of low-interest loans made available to farmers, solutions for problems facing the industrialization of China’s farming sector, fulfilling the policy to benefit farming through science and technology and the delivery of market information to the farming sector.

Hao is a passionate campaigner of farming reform and wishes that farmers could be educated more about this. “I really feel that modern farmers in China should learn more about scientific methods,” she says. Having experience of the need for farming education first-hand, she knows what she is talking about.

In 1986, she began to farm 200 mu (15mu=1 hectare). When she began, she had little or no knowledge about agricultural methods but turned to experts for help and learned by herself. By 1995, she was an agronomist. Now she farms with the help of technology and has a breeding base of more than 1,300 mu, manned by eight technicians.

With the effective use of agricultural technology, Hao has been able to develop organic farming methods and is passionate about the benefits of this form of farming. “Farmers should adjust their farming structure and develop organic agriculture and farming processing,” Hao told China.org.cn. Although poor farming markets and yield in recent years have badly affected many farmers, her experience has been good, thanks to the effective use of technology.

What she is suggesting at this NPC national meeting is that the government offer preferential policies for the industrialization of agricultural methods in rural China. First, technicians at town and county-level should give full instruction to farmers. Second, there should be active support of key farming produce organizations to assist in the development process in the sector and increase farmer’s income, security and solve additional problems. The last is the co-development of farmers and related company businesses, so that both may benefit from mutual cooperation. In her case, the farm benefits from cooperation with several hundred local farms.

In terms of organic food, its production and position in the market place, Hao has urged the authorities to be more stringent in regulating and monitoring the sale of goods. “It not only protects the interest of the consumer but also the reputation of the organic food production and processing companies too,” she says.

Her farm has now planned to set up a seed base and has initiated its own farm processing facility. Her hope is that it will speed up the process of her agribusiness and its development.

Farmers across China may not have her resources, or size farm, but they can certainly learn from her techniques and methods while the government would be wise to pay enough attention to this experienced and vocal farming deputy.

(China.org.cn by staff reporter Tang Fuchun, March 5, 2003)