Professor Ye Jingzhong and Associate professor He Congzhi wrote one policy advice entitled with “Stable Poverty Alleviation through Connecting rural production with Urban Consumption”, which was published in “People’s Daily (Internal Reference, Issue 643)” and endorsed by the central leader. CPAD held a symposium especially for this. Professor Ye Jingzhong was invited there to give a speech on how his team explored and put into practice the pattern of “poverty alleviation based on peasant production”. People’s Daily reported this pattern on July 4th, 2018.
Professor Ye Jingzhong and his team started to explore ways to develop this pattern in 2010. The 8-year-implementation shows that poverty alleviation based on peasant production and direct connection to certain groups of urban consumers could become a breakthrough in today’s efforts of poverty alleviation for and income growth of poor small farmers.
Ye’s team has been cooperating with the Poverty Alleviation Office of Yixian County, Baoding City, Hebei Province. They initiated the pilot project first in Sanggang Village, Pocang Township in the county, and later expanded the project area to nearby Baoshi Village. The details of the project activities go as follows:
Explore what the poor households have in terms of resources and organize them. 76 poor households attended the project, of which 46 were poor households (53 households identified by the government as poor households in the village in total). Twelve production team have been established with Baoshi Village joining in the project in 2016.
Rely on social network to establish consumers’ groups. Sanggang Village has been selling products to more than 400 urban families by the end of 2017. Baoshi Village has more than 100 urban families as regular consumers.
Connect the rural and the urban through goods produced and delivered by peasants to consumers. The production teams in Sanggang Village have been in charge of goods production, quality control, delivery organization, and interactions with consumers since 2012. Sanggang Village has had eight delivery spots in Beijing, and one in Baoding by the end of 2017. Baoshi Village has three delivery spots in Beijing.
Guarantee frequent urban-rural interactions through on-line and off-line activities. Apart from face-to-face communications in delivery spots, production teams and urban consumers interact with each other through WeChat groups, public accounts, and micro blogs. Many consumers visited the villages with their kids, relatives and friends, contributing greatly to the rural tourism.
Remove the middlemen and make win-win deals for sellers and buyers. On one hand, the poor households could sell products at relatively high prices (30% higher than the local prices) to regular consumers. On the other hand, the urban consumers, especially low-middle income citizens, could purchase healthy goods at relatively low prices (in comparison to those labelled as “organic”, “green” or “environmentally friendly” in the supermarkets).
All these facts prove that poverty alleviation based on peasant production have had great effects. First, poor households could easily take part in this kind of project since it is based on livelihood resources, and they could provide more than 30 types of products. Almost all poor households in Sanggang Village are now in the project as long as they have the capacity and the space to work and produce. Second, the poor households could have stable and sustainable income in that the goods are sold to regular consumers at relatively high prices. Poor households could have an extra income of more than 1,000 or even 10,000 RMB Yuan per year. Third, the rural-urban relationship is built up based on frequent interactions and mutual trusts. A number of consumers donated their clothes, toys and books to the villages voluntarily, besides purchasing their goods. Some consumers even helped the villagers who went to Beijing for hospitalization. The notion of harmonious and integrated rural-urban development reveals here. Fourth, the village is restored holistically and rural vitalization realized with reverence for both nature and culture. Over 80% households in Sanggang Village have reduced the use of pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers. They utilize very little or null chemical additives in vegetable plantation and animal husbandry. The production teams also motivated villagers to clean up the village and participate in cultural activities, which strengthened their organization abilities.
The research team believe that this pattern of poverty alleviation based on peasant production is highly feasible with stable effects, especially in areas where “poverty alleviation through industrialized production” cannot reach. The team suggests that this pattern should be encouraged on a larger scale.
