Wuqiao and the North China Plain
Over the weekend I had the opportunity to travel the China Agricultural University field research station in Wuqiao County in Hebei province, about 1 and 1/2 hour train ride from Beijing. My travel companions were two agronomy professors from universities in the United States. Their research focuses are on the development of corn and soil physics. I’ll spare you our conversations on soil carbon (even though they were fascinating discussions).
The research station focuses on crop science. We observed several interesting experiments ranging from nitrogen transmission in mung bean to the effects of different tillage practices on greenhouse gas emissions. There are dorms on site for the graduate students to live in.
The climate and landscape of the North China Plain is similar to the upper Midwest, flat and blisteringly hot during summer and shiveringly cold during winter. The agriculture, however, is quite different. They do grow corn here, a lot of corn, but they do not pair it in a corn-soybean rotation. They utilize a corn-wheat rotation. Occasionally a corn-mung bean rotation, which takes the nitrogen fixation role of soybean as a legume. This is quite strange considering northern China is a the center of origin for soybeans and hosts a large amount of the naturally developed soybean biodiversity.
The way agriculture is organized is also much different. They don’t have large swaths of farmland tended using mechanized systems; plots of land here are divided into small fields, each tended by a different farmer. This leads to nonuniform fields with different several week old corn right next to just planted corn. This inconsistent planting style could lead to increased issues with diseases by allowing pathogens that affect a specific stage of development to jump from plot to plot as one plot develops to the diseases target stage. The disease can last longer than if crops in a field were organized in a more consistent manner.
The Chinese government is trying to consolidate agriculture in this region. Since the central government already owns the land, once their leases expire the government may repurpose the land and combine plots into larger and more efficient fields. This obviously has negative effects regarding rural communities. Many of these families have been tenants to this land for centuries, it is not easy to simply surrender that livelihood to go and live in a apartment complex (some of which are now housing several villages which have been displaced).
An interesting trend, sort of acting as a stopgap solution to this problem is for one farmer to absorb the management of several pieces of land whilst the others who own that land go and work in the city. This allows the community to still retain local control over the land, allows an ‘out’ for those who wish to seek opportunity in the city, and leads to further consolidation and further agricultural efficiency while not disrupting livelihoods and rural lifestyles.
This trip has been one of the best portions of this internship. By traveling with two academics, who have studied Chinese agriculture extensively but remain outside observers, it allowed me to gain some valuable context and critique as to what I have been experiencing, and has given me another lense to compare my time here with. It is a great feature that this program is a total immersion into the Chinese way of life, but by adding the observations of my companions has strengthened and confirmed my understanding of China and Chinese agriculture.
Now for some fun side adventures!
The town where the research station is based in is where acrobatics began. We spent one morning exploring a collection of circus sideshow like exhibits. Everything from sword swallowing to monkeys jumping around.
The food in Hebei province is quite good (that really applies to anywhere in China, but I digress). The restaurant we went too one night carved a watermelon into the shape of a phoenix and placed red fruit around the base of it to make it seem like it was flying out of flames. We also did a little Q&A session about life in the United States. Most of the questions I got were about dating in the US, almost all from the same guy.
The last night we were there, walking into the hotel the front desk ladies were playing badminton in the middle of the lobby. Being, well myself, I ran right into the lobby and gestured for the racket. We played five rounds, and I was absolutely terrible.
