This article is from the public number: AIPharos Yueguangsha (ID: AI-Pharos) , author: Zhaojia Peng, the subject map from: Unsplash

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Under the guidance of the academician, Chinese agricultural technology experts successfully cultivated three high-yielding hybrid rice seeds suitable for the local soil climate. After use, the rice yield reached 10.8 tons per hectare, much higher than the local average yield of 3 tons per hectare.

The worship of high yield has a distinct Yuan Longping style. In its era of becoming an idol, the “limited arable land theory” has been repeatedly mentioned by the media: China uses less than 10% of the world’s cultivated land and feeds 20% of the world’s population. The high yield of hybrid rice is considered to be the key to achieving this feat.

In this story with national pride, it also contains the legitimate sources of agricultural industrialization in China. Relying on work in the laboratory, scientists have achieved breakthroughs in new technologies and yield figures, which have led to standardized crop varieties, which have been promoted by the public sector, with widespread success.

This is the deeper metaphor behind high-production numbers.

02 change

It’s not easy to tell such stories to Africans. In Tanzania, Chinese rice farmers have encountered resistance.

Since 2011, the China Agricultural University has carried out pilot projects on agricultural technology in China in two villages in Morogoro Province, Tanzania. Experts who came to the aid believed that through Chinese planting methods, they could effectively increase local crop yields and reduce poverty.

This enthusiasm has not been encouraged by local farmers. In the earliest experimental site in Peyapaya Village, local farmers rejected corn seeds provided by Chinese experts.

Peasants are skeptical of new adventures: the corn grown on weekdays is basically enough, why should we change to a new variety. What makes locals even more resistant is that replacing good seed requires additional purchases, and according to the intensive planting scheme proposed by Chinese experts, labor costs in farmland will increase. What if it fails?

How to convince farmers to try new things

This is a happy day for Yuan Longping. In the news of the day, another message was broadcast:

Yuan Longping’s team super hybrid Rice (Super Excellent Thousand Number) Passed the test: the average yield per mu was 1203.36 kilograms, once again creating the newest and highest record for rice yield in the world.

A few months later, Huang Yunfeng’s Lucky Group officially signed a cooperation agreement with Yuan Seeds. The two sides will establish a Chinese hybrid rice production and breeding base in Angola. Huang Yunfeng officially became Yuan Longping’s “disciple”. He said in an interview that he dreamed of becoming “Yuan Longping” in Africa.

Yuan Longping inscribed Huang Yunfeng: develop hybrid rice, lucky Angola.

Similar admirers.

In 2016, Yuan Longping also met with Li Xiaofeng, chairman of Nigeria’s Lee Group, which has more than 40 factories in Nigeria and is one of the four largest Chinese companies in Nigeria. Shortly after the meeting, Lee’s Group trialed hybrid rice in Nigeria.

Cooperation with local Chinese enterprises in Africa is another model for Yuan-style agriculture to go global. A person in charge of Yuan’s seed industry once said: Only after the industry chain is completed can you make money and solve the problem of eating.

04 Competition

Yuan Longping is not the first rice maker to reach Africa, nor is it the last.

In 1961, Henry de Lauranet, the priest of the Jesuit Society of France, came to Madagascar. He found that in this East African island nation, there is a near-faith worship of rice. In Madagascar’s creation myth, rice is a gift from the creation god to mankind. The daughter of God marries mortals, and rice is the dowry that goes with him.

Rice is still a good password.

In Madagascar, 70% of the population is engaged in agriculture, with more people and less land. Most rice farmers live in poverty. Since the 1970s, the country has been unable to self-sufficiently and began to import rice. In the 1980s, Madagascar rice self-sufficiency fell to 15% of demand. Behind the numbers is cruel hunger.

Another identity of Lauraine is an agronomist, who has offered to use his skills to help people out of poverty.

In 1981, he established an agricultural school dedicated to helping local youth obtain vocational education in agriculture. In the course of teaching, he found that a significant factor in the low agricultural productivity in the region was the problem of local farmers’ planting methods. Madagascar’s traditional sowing method is not very technical, sowing the seeds in the soil, and then watching the sky to eat.

Starting in 1983, Lauraine began to teach farmers a new way of sowing, which he called “intensified cultivation of rice” (SRI) technology. This is a sowing method of interval sowing and reasonable fertilization. With the help of this technology, local crop yields have been effectively increased. This technology has since been adopted in more than 55 countries around the world, improving the cultivation of millions of rice farmers.

In 1995, Laura died in Madagascar. A few years before his death, the last thing he did for local farmers was to launch and set up an indigenous NGO to improve agricultural production methods.

Almost at the same time as Laura developed new technologies, another agricultural scientist arrived in East Africa.

A major famine in Ethiopia in 1984 threatened millions of people. At the time the chairman of the Japan Shipbuilding Industry Foundation