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Distance Education Helps Farmers Get Rich
Sun Bin, now deputy head of Lishu Township in Huanan County, Heilongjiang Province, had to quit school due to poverty after he finished junior middle school in 1982. He went back to his poor hometown and began to do farm work.
"I was determined that I would attain merit even though I am only a farmer, " Sun recalled. In the early spring of 1991, Sun attended the distance education class at the Huanan Branch of the Central Agricultural Broadcasting and TV School. In the ensuing three years, he systematically learned basic agricultural theories and relevant special techniques."Study broadened my vision and I took the lead in my village in engaging in scientific farming." Sun contracted five hectares of land to perform experiments with rice cultivation. He succeeded with more than 20 experimental items and is now experimenting with crossbreeding. In the eyes of his fellow villagers, Sun has become a deft hand at scientific rice farming.
Each year during the slack season, Sun holds one or two training classes in the villages of Lishu Township that engage in rice production, teaching rice farming techniques and related agro-technical know-how. Sun established a high-quality rice association in Huanan County, which has attracted some 100 farmers who are keen on researching quality rice cultivation. Each year, he freely provides association members with 40,000 yuan worth of seeds, rice seedlings, chemical fertilizer and other services.
To develop industrial operations, Sun founded the Hongyuan Rice Co. In September 1999, Sun 's company signed a 21.5 million yuan contract with a Hong Kong business for the purchase of 4,500 tons of Sun Bin-1 rice. "It is the distance education provided by the Agricultural Broadcasting School that has helped us get rich," Sun said.
Agricultural Broadcasting School
China is a country with a large agricultural population. Of the 1.26 billion Chinese citizens, 900 million live in the countryside. Sustained agricultural and rural development is of great strategic significance to national political and social stability and economic development. But the key to solving agricultural and rural problems lies in scientific and technological progress and in the improvement of rural laborers' scientific know-how and modern agricultural skills.
However, the rural population is scattered over the vast countryside. Many farmers have never left their native towns, nor have they had access to secondary or higher education. To improve their scientific and educational qualifications, it is impossible to rely solely on traditional teaching methods. To fill the gap, the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Education and more than 10 other departments jointly established the Agricultural Broadcasting School��ABS �� in December 1980. Free of regional and time restrictions, the Agricultural Broadcasting School provides distance education, which is difficult for regular agricultural colleges and schools, to farmers by means of broadcasting, TV, audio and video recordings, VCDs and a computer network. In doing so, it has helped accelerate the cultivation of qualified agricultural personnel and the spread of science and technology.
Through 20 years of development, the ABS now has 46,000 full-time and part-time teaching and administrative staff. It comprises a central school, 38 provincial-level schools, 330 prefectural-level schools, 2,408 county-level schools and 23,000 teaching classes in towns and townships. These facilities have enabled farmers living in remote areas to have opportunities to receive secondary and higher education, which was impossible in the past. Today, ABS has become the most popular agricultural school in the vast countryside, providing multiple forms and levels of agricultural education and training.
The Agricultural Broadcasting School offers more than 100 specialties, and has published more than 300 kinds of textbooks and recorded 3,017 hours of 230 different audio and video teaching programs. The Central People's Broadcasting Station, China Central Television and the China Education Television Station annually broadcast more than 1,000 hours of the school's distance education program. With the opening of the China Rural Distance Education Net ��crdenet.net.cn�� last year, the school began to offer computer network education on a trial basis.
With an enrolment of 1.2 million students at present, the school may well be the largest school in China and even the world. By 1999, the school had trained 3 million secondary and higher special technical and managerial personnel. A total of 2.45 million farmers had received one-year primary education and nearly 100 million farmers had participated in organized training of applied techniques.
Benefits from ABS
The Agricultural Broadcasting School has cultivated a large number of practical talents who have played important roles in agricultural and rural development.
First, they have reinforced the grass-roots agricultural scientific contingent and actively spread advanced, practical agricultural science and technology. Currently, most of the agorotechnicians in rural areas are either ABS graduates or students. About one-third of those who are popularizing agroscience in towns and townships throughout the country are ABS graduates. The rate is even higher in some areas. For instance, 90 percent of the directors of the agrotechnical stations in 109 towns and townships of Tieling City in northeast China's Liaoning Province are graduates of the Agricultural Broadcasting School. The school's graduates have played an important role over the past years in accelerating the popularization of agro-techniques at the grass-roots level.
Zhu Yongxiang, an ABS graduate in Yingshang County of Anhui Province, has established an agrotechnical service station. By introducing a technology-related system of contracted responsibilities, the station has guided 8,600 farming households in the use of new varieties and techniques on a large expanse of farmland.
Second, they have reinforced rural grass-roots leadership, contributing to the improvement of the managerial level of rural business operations. To date, a total of 1.34 million ABS graduates have taken leading posts at the grass-roots level in rural areas. They form the main component of local leadership in some rural areas. Take Yuqing County of Guizhou Province for example. The county is located in a mountainous area with a population of 270,000. Some 100 ABS graduates are cadres at or above the town level and 171 are leaders in various villages. They have become trailblazers who lead farmers to get rich. Among them, Zhou Xiuping is a typical example.
Zhou is now the Party secretary of the Luojiapo Village Party Branch, which used to be known for its poverty. In 1987, Zhou became a student of the Yuqing Branch of the ABS Guizhou School. After graduation, he applied the fruit-cultivation techniques he learned in the school to orange growing experiments and achieved success."The Agricultural Broadcasting School helped me become the first in my village to rise out of poverty, " Zhou recalled.
Zhou then passed on the techniques to his fellow villagers, personally teaching them sapling cultivation and tree management. A few years later, the village cultivated more than 3.5 million high-quality orange saplings and earned a net income of more than 1.1 million yuan. The village finally removed its label of poverty. In 1994, the village's Party members unanimously elected Zhou as Party branch secretary.
In 1995, Zhou again entered the Agricultural Broadcasting School for advanced studies in the specialty of fruit and vegetable cultivation.
Under Zhou's leadership, Luojiapo has turned into a village specializing in orange cultivation, with a 47.7-hectare orange plantation. Having cast off poverty, Zhou and his villagers began to improve the harsh local environment, closing off 80 percent of the hillsides for afforestation and introducing a closed fishing season for comprehensive treatment of the 4-km Manxi River valley.
Currently, the village has a road linking it with the outside, every household has access to electricity and tap water, 90 percent of the households have installed cable TV, 9 percent of the households have telephones, and the village's primary school has audio-video teaching facilities. With an annual net income of 2,500 yuan per capita, villagers are leading a moderately comfortable life.
Zhou's achievements have won him various honors. He was cited by the Ministry of Agriculture as a model in learning and applying science and by the Guizhou government as a model laborer.
There are nearly 5 million ABS graduates nationwide who have become agro-scientific talents like Sun Bin and Zhou Xiuping.
Third, ABS graduates have helped farmers improve their ability to achieve wealth through science and technology. ABS graduates take the lead in using the techniques they learned in the school to escape poverty. They then encourage and help local farmers to learn and use science and technology. Some ABS students have developed specialized production techniques, making an active contribution to the promotion of industrialized agricultural operations and the development of modern agriculture. For instance, Man Shuyue, a graduate from the ABS animal husbandry specialty, has earned an annual profit of more than 100,000 yuan by developing the massive raising of egg-laying chickens. Then, by providing technical service, he helped 70 percent of the households in his Zhouxiao Village in Haicheng City, Liaoning, to specialize in raising chickens.
A survey in Xiayi County, Henan Province, shows that the net per-capita income of the 100 students who received ABS one-year primary educational training reached 2,007 yuan in 1997, 23.7 percent, or 387 yuan, higher than the average level in the county that year. Beijing Review
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