Chinese agriculture
According to the Association’s head of agriculture who welcomed us, the modules for each peasant vary greatly in size and the family does not always have their members’ land all together.
By the way, the concept of peasants in China is quite peculiar: considering peasants one who consumes cereal produced by himself, and a worker who buys cereal for his consumption. Those are 80% of the population. However, many of them are not legitimate peasants, because despite having their own planting area and living in villages, they work most of the year in various industries.
All agriculture is irrigated and the trays are often small, which makes families often have scattered areas.
Now — autumn — they are finishing the harvest and preparing the land for the next planting. If it’s the wheat, they plant now, it starts to grow, then winter comes. They cut branching of sprouted wheat about 30 cm close to the ground. Even if it gets under the snow the roots do not die and in spring they sprout again producing earlier than if they were planted after winter. Corn has already been harvested — now they harvest cotton in this region (Tachai).
The work of the peasants is all manual. Some larger communes have tractors that plow for everyone. The rest is all at hand.
In this region the villages are small, 4 to 5 km from each other. During the Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) the Chinese built tunnels linking one village to another, where they fled when the Japanese arrived. Despite this, they said that 70 million Chinese died in this war.
China is a major producer of stone coal with six huge reserves. There are villages that are totally on coal. They export a lot.
Going further southwest we are entering a region where it rains a little. I see it on the flat roofs where they put grain to dry. The plowed lands are fertilized with various types of fertilizers: remains of the previous crop, human and animal manure, chemical fertilizer. Spread it all out with big squeegees. Next to the fields are large mounds of straw and manure fermenting and then spreading. Nothing is lost in the field. They use the most different and primitive forms of plow. Next to some crops we saw a room made just like cement floor and bamboo slab roof to store tools ??
There are villages where the leader, a kind of mayor, is a woman. They are elected by the peasants with a three-year term. During this time if she is not pleasing most can be dismissed and puts another in the post. Her job is to spread the Party’s policy to the village people, contacts with the provincial (state) leaders conveying the demands of the peasants on both labor, social and economic issues. She also has her land where she works like the others.
Each farmer usually works 2 months a year in the field. The rest of the time is spent in the industry or in small village shops to sell their surplus products. Some families gather their lands that sometimes reach up to 40 Mus. No one leaves his land but can give in to another, to work in the industry full time. In these cases, the latter pays the land concessionaire a combined installment.
Production is determined by the state-run vegetable firm of the municipality that reports needing so many tons of such vegetables. The village leadership summons the direction of production brigades and distributes the tasks. These meetings are held 2–3 times a month as needed, with the heads of industries, crops, livestock, etc. Two annual meetings are for deciding the productions and the other for checking the applications of the work. With the methods applied the same area produces up to 4½ harvests per year. Always remember that there are 1 billion and 200 thousand people to feed.
