Ar Horqin Banner falls under the jurisdiction of Chifeng City in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. With an annual rainfall of only around 350 millimeters, Ar Horqin is prone to year-round drought (the area reports a 90-percent incidence of spring drought and 50-percent incidence of summer droughts). Although agriculture has always been the region’s leading industry, it has been hindered by factors such as low scientific and technological capacity, high land fragmentation, inadequate investment in agricultural infrastructure, weak drought response, and a lack of planting expertise in poor households. These obstacles have left Ar Horqin’s agricultural industry “at the mercy of the climate” for many years.

Map agronomists test the sugar content in a sugar beet.

Poor families face not only economic obstacles, but also emotional poverty; young people often have to leave home to make a living, leaving children and the elderly behind. These “left-behind” children and elders represent an increasingly prominent phenomenon.

Guo Yaqiang is a farmer in Xinping Village, Tianshan Town, Ar Horqin Banner. He had to leave more than 30 mu (2 hectares) of farmland at home a few years ago to work as a taxi driver in town, and then a brick layer at a construction site. Why leave home? "Half of my farmland had no access to water, so the soil was unable to support the harvest, which made my days fearfully bitter," Guo wearily explains. Just last year, however, when Guo went home to run some errands, he took a walk through the village and the fields and decided to move back.

His decision came because Sinochem Group, China's largest supplier of agricultural inputs and a leading operator of modern agricultural service platforms, set up a designated assistance project in Xinping Village. The initiative centered on agricultural production trusteeship, incorporating science and technology from around the world, focusing on local services, and providing advanced solutions for China's agricultural modernization. Under the guidance of MAP service, the village’s production trusteeship area came to cover 4,200 mu (280 hectares), fundamentally linking up the farmland in the village to make agricultural mechanization possible.

Like many villagers, Guo pooled all his farmland as shares in his village’s farmers' cooperative, planting sugar beets. He was very satisfied with the last harvest: Through MAP service, he was able to cooperate with a local sugar factory, linking production and marketing. Today, output per mu is 3.5 tons, saving 71.5 yuan (10.6 U.S. dollars) of cost compared to traditional “self-planting” farming, and sugar beets sell for 570 yuan (84.5 U.S. dollars) per ton. These developments have increased incomes by 400 yuan (60 U.S. dollars) per mu; total income has risen by 4,000 yuan (593 U.S. dollars) compared to traditional production. Together with MAP, Guo can rest assured knowing that sugar beets will provide a stable income.

Farmers are very satisfied with this sugar beet crop directed by MAP service.

Guo Yaqiang has also become a professional agricultural machine operator, taking the lead in helping others farm. Not only does he receive a dividend from the cooperative, he also gets paid 4,000 yuan (593 U.S. dollars) on a monthly basis, much more than he earned as a migrant worker. Now working in his hometown, Guo has not only solved the problem of economic poverty, but also addressed the emotional poverty facing many migrant workers' families in rural areas.

Source：

This article is excerpted from Global Solicitation on Best Poverty Reduction Practices.