From Nov. 25 to 26, the fifth Chinese Youth Volunteer Service Entrepreneurship Competition was held online, and 102 teams across the country competed in the finals. After intense competition, HZAU’s volunteer service team, with the slogan of “developing agriculture through practice and study”（耕读兴农）, won one of the ten national gold medals with their project of “cultivating water caltrop, boosting rural economy—a new way of empowering rural revitalization through water caltrop industry”.
HZAU volunteer service team leverages the disciplinary strengths of our university to explore and create an exemplary model of public service program, integrating high-tech farming with food process industry. The project “cultivating water caltrop, boosting rural economy—a new way of empowering rural revitalization through water caltrop industry” is on the basis of the comprehensive development of the water caltrop industry. It helps farmers to improve the quality of water caltrop at the planting stage, manufacture deep processing products including water caltrop noodles and water caltrop wine at the production stage, and sells water caltrop at the sales stage through TikTok and Pinduoduo by the operating e-commerce team. These can create jobs for farmers and guide villagers to sell products via livestreaming platform, which can boost agriculture and make farmers rich by technology, e-commerce and the establishment of their own brand. Six production bases have been built in Hubei, Guangxi, Yunnan and other provinces, covering about 20,000 mu（1,334 hectares) and providing jobs and business opportunities for more than 5000 farmers.
Yuan Shihan (the leader of the volunteer service team) said: “Helping farmers sell their agricultural products to get rich is our aspiration. In the practice of research in the countryside, we came to realize that the real assistance needs mature mechanisms to promote sustainable development. Peng Da, the project initiator, led the volunteers to try to use market-oriented operation methods to achieve sustainable development by creating the whole industrial chain of water caltrop under the guidance of the teachers from Youth League Committee of HZAU, the College of Humanities and Social Science and the College of Economics & Management. Building the industrial chain of water caltrop not only promotes the development of our team, but also boosts the industrial upgrading and wealth the farmers may enjoy.”
Peng Da visits water caltrop growers
Chinese Youth Volunteer Service Entrepreneurship Competition was founded in 2015. The 2021 competition was hosted by the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League, the Central Civilization Office, the Ministry of Civil Affairs, the Ministry of Water Resources, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, the National Health Commission, the China’s Disabled Persons’ Federation, and the Shandong Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China and the People’s Government of Shandong Province.
Source: http://news.hzau.edu.cn/2021/1130/62106.shtml
Translated by: Fan Rusi
Supervised by: Pan Buhan
