Liang Hongwei (first from right), a field school counselor, teaches sugarcane planting techniques to farmers in the Guangxi Sugarcane Demonstration Zone. *Provided by respondents.
Recently, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) Agricultural Technical Cooperation Project (TCP) "Sugar Crops Ecologically Safe Planting and Resource Recycling" (hereinafter referred to as the "Sugar Project") summary meeting was held in Beijing, from the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs of the Agricultural ** Promotion Center, FAO, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region representatives attended the meeting, and discussed the prospects and strategies of ecologically safe planting and resource recycling for the sustainable development of sugar crop production.
Sweetness: China's sugar crop production is facing challenges.
Sugar beet and sugarcane are the two major raw materials of the sugar industry, and their production has a strong regional nature, mainly concentrated in a few countries and regions with suitable climatic conditions.
According to Wang Xu, a soil management expert and researcher on sugar projects from the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, China is the world's largest sugar importer, third largest sugar consumer and fourth largest sugar crop producer, and is one of the few countries in the world that has advantages in both sugarcane and sugar beet production. Despite the natural endowment and advantages of growing and producing sugar crops, China's sugar crop production has shown a downward trend in the past decade. Wang Xu believes that China's sugar production faces the following challenges: the production cost of sugar crops is high, and the yield and quality need to be improved;The quality and management level of cultivated land in the main producing areas are low;low efficiency of water resources and nutrient use for irrigation of farmland.
Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region and Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region are the regions with the largest sugarcane and sugar beet cultivation areas in China, respectively. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, in 2022, Guangxi's sugarcane planting area was 850,000 hectares, accounting for about 66% of the country's sugarcane planting areaInner Mongolia sugar beet planting area 870,000 hectares, accounting for 54% of the country's sugar beet planting area.
The sugar project was officially approved in December 2020, and the implementation period is from December 2020 to December 2023, and Hechi City, Guangxi Province and Chifeng City, Inner Mongolia, which are the dominant sugar crop planting areas in China, are selected as the demonstration areas to improve the planting technology and management capabilities of local growers by popularizing and disseminating technical concepts such as soil health, ecological safe planting of sugar crops, resource recycling, and value-added benefits of the industrial chain, so as to solve the problems existing in the production of sugar crops. By carrying out the demonstration of sugarcane and sugar beet ecological planting technology, we will establish a sustainable ecological and safe planting and resource recycling technology model for sugar crops, improve the soil ecological environment, increase the income of growers, and promote the sustainable development of the sugar crop industry.
"Sweet" approach: Participatory training focuses on capacity building.
The extension methods of the TCP project are mainly based on Farmer Field School Facilitator Training (TOT) and Farmer Field School (FFS), with a focus on participatory training.
Participatory training is based on heuristic teaching, entertaining and teaching, and the sharing of experience and results runs through every activity. At the same time, it focuses on the improvement of abilities, such as the ability to run field schools, systematic planning skills, organizational skills, time management skills, participatory evaluation skills, etc., and ultimately improve their decision-making skills. Guo Rong, a training expert and researcher at the FAO project, said, "TOT and FFS have achieved three results, one is to train the backbone team of sugar beet and sugarcane planting, the second is to establish the concept of ecologically safe planting for the trainees, and the third is to introduce a new mechanism of participatory training, which has a certain role in promoting the transformation of the top-down model of traditional agricultural technology training." ”
From 2022 to 2023, with the support of relevant departments in Guangxi and Inner Mongolia, the Sugar Project carried out three phases of TOT and trained 31 field school counselors each. Subsequently, five groups of counselors from Guangxi Province carried out FFS training in Yizhou District of Hechi City and Luocheng Gelao Autonomous County, with a total of 301 trainees participating in 14 sessionsFive counselor groups in Inner Mongolia have successively carried out FFS, with a total of 123 students participating in 24 sessions.
In the past, our training was generally a classroom, the teacher lectured, and the students listened, resulting in the students not being impressed by the teaching content. Participatory training is bottom-up, so we not only go deep into the field, but also create panels and lesson plans based on the phenomena we observe, and then teach them to farmers, so that farmers can deepen their understanding of knowledge and technology. Wei Bin, a representative of the farmer field school counselor and deputy director of the Guangxi Hechi Sugar Development Center, told reporters.
The training targets of FFS are farmers, and they need the guidance and guidance of our counselors. Liang Hongwei, a representative of the farmer field school counselor and manager of the agricultural technology department of Guangxi Boqing Food, said, "It was difficult to carry out FFS at first, and the cooperation of farmers was not high, but with the gradual advancement of training, farmers have seen the results achieved by using new technologies, and their learning initiative is also improving." ”
The "sweet" future: consolidating gains and perpetuating patterns.
At the end of the three-year project, Guangxi sugarcane and Inner Mongolia sugar beet demonstration areas have achieved significant yield increases.
When the TOT trainees followed up and observed the growth of the sugarcane demonstration area in Guangxi, they found that the sugarcane treated by the ecological planting combination technology showed certain advantages in terms of root system, tillering, plant height, stem and leaf color. The yield test results of Yizhou District from 2022 to 2023 showed that the yield of new plant cane treated by ecological planting combination technology increased by 11%-59%, and the yield of perennial cane increased by 9%-13%.
We have laid out more than 2,000 acres of demonstration fields based on Wengniute Banner. According to the yield measurement results, the sugar beet treated by ecological planting combination technology had a significant effect of increasing yield and sugar, increasing yield by 18%-25%, and the sugar content rate increased by 01-0.5 percentage points. Liu Jingxiu, deputy section chief and extension researcher of Chifeng Agricultural and Animal Husbandry Technology Extension Center, introduced: "On the basis of the good demonstration results achieved in 2022, large growers trained by FFS have developed more than 100 sugar beet growers outside the project demonstration area to promote the concept of scientific planting to them, and good results have also been achieved." ”
The results of the sugar project have been very significant. China can share its experience in sugar crop production with other countries and learn from each other to address the challenges faced in sugar crop production. Lucrezia Caen, Chief Technology Officer of Land Management and Projects of FAO Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific, said that FAO is optimistic about China's successful cases and stories in the field of agriculture, and hopes that China can participate more in FAO's projects and promote the further development of various projects.
TCP plays the role of seed funding, taking a project site and the technical route of a project as the starting point to explore a technology improvement path that combines international and domestic advanced experience with local actual conditions. Zhao Lijun, deputy director of the Agricultural Promotion Center of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, believes that "although the sugar project is over, its model, team, and exchanges should be continued." ”
We look forward to the development of the FFS participatory approach after the project ends. In the course of the project, we have strengthened the partnerships necessary for the healthy development of the sugar industry, and we look forward to a greater role in the future development of sustainable agriculture. FAO would like to be part of this partnership. Zhang Zhongjun, assistant representative and chargé d'affaires of the FAO Representative Office in China, said.
It is hoped that FAO will continue to support us to carry out more farmer training projects, promote the application of ecological planting and resource recycling technology models on a larger scale, effectively solve the problems faced by the development of agricultural production and the protection of water and soil resources, achieve energy conservation and efficiency, and promote the high-quality development of agriculture. Yi Keke, deputy director of the Institute of Agricultural Resources and Regional Planning of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, the project manager and the organizer of the implementation, said.