HZAU President, Deng Xiuxin, as a deputy to National People’s Congress（NPC）, always feels a strong sense of responsibility and undertakes in-depth investigations oriented for the national needs for either scientific research or NPC’s proposal. As a deputy of the 11th and 12th NPC, he paid special attention to related issues on agriculture, rural areas, farmers and education.
According to Mr. Deng, the employment of college graduates has always been a widespread concern in the society due to mismatch between talent supply and social demand. Till now, statistic shows that no more than 20% of agricultural college students devote themselves to rural areas below county-level, leading to severe shortage of talents of agricultural science and technology in those areas. Confronted with such problem, President Deng advised launching the pilot project of free education for agricultural college students as early as 2008. He also suggested graduate students majoring in agriculture should return to rural areas, start businesses and become “modern farmers”.
It is not difficult for a graduate to find a good job who has acquired practical skills based on solid theoretical background with “down-to-earth” attitude. Speaking from his own experience, Mr. Deng encouraged students to balance theory with practice in their study in order to cope with “job hunting difficulty” by cultivating a scientific outlook on job finding.
President Deng made suggestions for local areas on targeted poverty reduction measures. “Agricultural poverty relief can only be achieved by both taking practical actions and making full use of technology and knowledge. Poverty reduction should not only meet urgent needs today but also promise long-term benefits. It is necessary to ensure the sustainable growh of farmers’ income without the help of the work team after their work is finished,” He said.
Jingyang Chicken, a specialty of Jianshi County, Hubei Province, is a red-hot seller for its taste but may easily be infected by bird flu. The expert team from HZAU carried out targeted poverty reduction plan oriented toward its problems, aimed at tackling key problems of special technology and then designed an ecological farming “553” model (500 chickens raised by each poverty-stricken family; 50 chickens raised on per mu of mountain forests and orchards; net profit of 30RMB for each chicken). The local farming scale has been expanded year by year and thousands of poor households shook off poverty with the support of leading enterprises and academician workstation.
Deng had a long-term view on the poverty alleviation here. “The development depends on its local team after the industry becomes mature. To reduce poverty, we need to cultivate local talents by teaching them how to fish rather than giving them fish to eat. In order to have a long-term effect in poverty alleviation, to stop poverty from passing on to the next generation and to strengthen the inner drive for the economic growth in the local areas, HZAU launched a “three-bunch” program for the long-term development on a firm basis in the local area, namely inputting a bunch of technologies, training a bunch of local technicians, and cultivating a bunch of college students from the targeted areas.
“Dogmatism leads to the failure in poverty reduction and harms farmers’ interests. Before starting an agricultural Pro-poor industry, a multi-party investigation should be carried out to fully motivate each party. Agriculture poverty relief should entail the good use of three forces, government, technology and market, with a view to solving practical problems, thus farmers can get benefit from the effective reform,” Mr. Deng said.
As an agricultural scientist, Deng hopes that his scientific research can make contributions to agriculture; as a NPC deputy, he would like to witness that his proposal brings glory and honor to the country as well as brings down-to-earth benefits to the nation.
Tr. Yin Yaqi
http://news.hzau.edu.cn/2017/0302/48402.shtml
