How a modernized and mechanized farm sector was built in Jilin

A comprehensive program by the provincial government in Jilin to modernize agriculture has been making substantial progress since it was launched in 2015. The program was initiated at the urging of President Xi Jinping during the Two Sessions meetings that year.

An overview of Dashi village in Jilin city, northeast China's Jilin Province. [File Photo: IC]

In the four years since the program was launched, officials in Jilin Province have allocated over 14 billion yuan (nearly 2.1 billion U.S. dollars) towards mechanizing 600,000 hectares of fields in 14 counties. A total of 450 agriculture cooperatives have been established, and the rate of agricultural mechanization has reached 86 percent thanks to subsidies for farm machinery purchases.

"In the past, we had to pay more than 200,000 yuan (nearly 29,000 U.S. dollars) to buy a tractor. But now, thanks to the recent subsidy policy for farm machinery purchases, we only need to pay about 100,000 yuan (nearly 14,500 U.S. dollars) to buy it," said the director of an agricultural cooperative in Jilin Province.

The Jilin government has also sent more than 6,000 local farmers to agricultural training courses in other provinces or overseas over the past three years. "When I was visiting the agriculture industry in Japan, Korean, and some European countries, I found that the competitiveness of agriculture products in the global market is highly correlated with the rate of mechanization and the scale of production," said one local farmer from the city of Shulan in Jilin Province.

To provide a better environment for the people living in Jilin, the provincial government initiated a project called "Construction of Ecological Barriers" in 2015. It has recovered 122,000 hectares of desertified land, restored over 2,400 hectares of wetland, and established a 760,000 hectare forest in the East Changbai Mountain Area.

Li Xindong, the vice dean of Jilin Forestry Investigation and Design Research Institute.[Screenshot: China Plus]

"We have inspected 20,000 forest belts with a total area of 2.21 million Mu [nearly 147,000 hectares] in the past year, so we can improve the forest network protecting farmland in central and western China," said Li Xindong, the vice dean of the Jilin Forestry Investigation and Design Research Institute.

There are now 8.2 million hectares of forest in Jilin Province, and rare species such as crane and wild goose have started to reappear.

The improvement of the local environment has given a boost to the local tourism industry. During this year's spring vacation, the tourism industry took in over 14 billion yuan, which represents a one-fifth increase on last year. And 254,100 visits were made to the 27 ski resorts in the province during the year, which is an increase of almost one-quarter over the previous year.

Farmers from Ma Anling Village, Jilin City, Jilin Province. [Screenshot: China Plus]

"The government has helped us to transform this into a site for tourists. I can make 30,000 yuan to 40,000 yuan during winter since I opened a farmhouse for visitors," said a local farmer.

"President Xi said that a snowy mountain is equal to a golden mountain or a silver mountain. The resources on the mountain can contribute a lot to the tourism industry in Jilin Province," said Chen Shoujun, the deputy director of Jilin Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism.

Chen says that the province will work to integrate primary, secondary, and tertiary industries and upgrade the processing facilities for agricultural products, while also helping to improve the quality of the environment and boosting local tourism.