"I didn't expect there to be a committee of farmers in Shanghai" "Farmers in Shanghai don't need to go too far" "Let Shanghainese taste Shanghai itself"
On the eve of graduation last year, Fan Renjing, a graduate student in the sociology department at Peking University, received a call from the Shanghai Municipal Agricultural Commission asking if he would like to work for them. Before this, Fan Renjing, who was very interested in the three rural issues, even thought that Shanghai did not have such a department specifically responsible for agricultural and rural work.
After working in the Cadre Personnel Office of the Shanghai Municipal Agricultural Commission for half a year, Fan Renjing was sent to Yangwang Village, Nanqiao Town, Fengxian District, as an elected student, as an assistant to the party secretary. "Post-95s", "Peking University", "Selected Students", these labels invisibly put on several halos for fledgling young people, but Fan Renjing understands that each label represents a different perspective on the problem, and can also give him more courage to solve the problem.
The economic park has a sound and color, agricultural farming and continuous operations, and a beautiful style of concentrated residence, which is the basic outline of this rural revitalization demonstration village that Fan Renjing saw when he first came to Yangwang Village in February this year. In the 1990s, this "poorest village in the county" successfully transformed from "the first negative village" to "the richest village" by actively carrying out investment promotion and opening an economic park. By the end of 2019, Yangwang Economic Park has introduced more than 200 production-oriented enterprises and more than 1,500 registered-type enterprises, and the annual disposable income of the village has reached 60 million yuan.
Behind the prosperity of the industry and the ecological livability, specific to each villager, what is their living status? What are the highlights and difficulties of their production and life? These are what Fan Renjing is more interested in. Perhaps out of the instinct of the sociology major, he began to use household research to understand these specific people, and his target was 25 small farmers in Yangwang Village.
This is Fan Renjing's second visit to the home of the orange farmer Lao Wang. Lao Wang, a native of Taizhou, Zhejiang Province, has been in Shanghai for more than 20 years, and now a family of three generations and 7 people live in Yangwang Village, working together to manage an orangery.
Lao Wang: This is the old water house in the original village, and we picked it up ourselves. My son actually grew up in Shanghai and studied here. Now he has two children, and his mother-in-law has also come here to help with the children.
Fan Renjing: The oranges should be ripe, right? Are there many people coming on National Day?
Lao Wang: This morning there are 4 orange pickers, there can be one or two hundred people on National Day, and many bring children to play.
Fan Renjing: I'm curious, how did you publicize it?
Lao Wang: In the past, I used to boil water and sell it on the side of the road, and the advertisement for the orangery was on the stove where the boiling water was boiled. Now you can't sell boiling water, some people come to play, WeChat, circle of friends sent out, you know.
Fan Renjing: How do you sell the chickens in your orangery?
Lao Wang: A 140-150, no one knows, no one wants.
Fan Renjing: This kind of authentic free-range chicken is particularly scarce in the market, and you are one less channel to promote. So I said earlier that a few of our farmers would join forces to set up a cooperative, and when there were chickens, we would arrange a van to send them out together. Or you can try to do the promotion yourself, like Fengxian New Town now lives a lot of people, we are so close to the city, to the subway station with their own chickens, get an ice pack, take a small box, tell everyone where I am, take some small videos, this is the most rudimentary publicity method, but he is effective.
Lao Wang: I'm afraid no one will pay attention to it...
Fan Renjing: No, I went to Yangpu myself to ship goods, I put the chicken there, and people kept coming and asking: "Where did you get this chicken, how to sell it", and you can not only sell chickens, but also sell eggs!
Stationed in the village for nearly a year
Fan Renjing had already traveled all over Yangwang Village
25 smallholder farmers
Some preliminary reflections were formed
Half of the small farmers in Yangwang Village are from Taizhou, Zhejiang, and 90% of the farmers from other places. Because it is backed by an international metropolis, it can provide a very rich employment and economic resources. For example, farmers in places like Sichuan and Hunan may need to move across provinces and go to other places to work, but the people here in Fengxian don't need to go too far.
In some villages in Henan and Hebei, the per capita arable land area is only about one mu, and the farmer is often in a state of part-time employment, that is, he grows his own family's three or four acres of land while working outside to earn money. But the countryside of Shanghai is completely different, there are few local people willing to cultivate the land, the agriculture here has been quite specialized, professional, a family here, he can cover 20 acres, 30 acres of land, can grow greenhouse vegetables, can also operate orchards, can be the same as the income of migrant workers, or even higher.
What kind of trend does this represent? That is, with the increasing degree of urbanization in our country, the current situation in rural Shanghai will gradually develop in other places, and the Yangwang Village we see now is likely to be a pioneer image, a sample.
What is a Transferee?
Selecting and transferring students is the abbreviation of the group in which the organization departments of the party committees of various provinces systematically select and transfer fresh graduates of colleges and universities with excellent academic qualities and academic qualities to work at the grass-roots level, and as reserve candidates for party and government leading cadres and high-quality staff candidates for party and government organs at or above the county level.
According to the data, from 2019 to the first half of 2021 alone, a total of more than 53,800 selected students were enrolled across the country. After years of practice, the selection and transfer of students has also become one of the important ways for young college students to take root in the grassroots to do practical things and exert their youth to serve their families and the country.
During his year in Fengxian, Fan Renjing also did a real thing for local farmers, cooperating with Lu Zhengyuan, an alumnus of Peking University and a fellow selected student, to sell Fengxian's agricultural products directly to residential areas in the urban area.
Fan Renjing and Lu Zhengyuan met when they were in school and worked together in the youth league committee. After graduation, Lu Zhengyuan came to work in the Propaganda Department of the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee, and also became a transfer student at the beginning of this year, entering the Oak Bay Community in Xinjiangwancheng Street, Yangpu District: "What are the characteristics of this community?" They are particularly inconvenient to buy vegetables. I thought Fan Renjing was in the countryside and he was from the Agricultural Committee, so I told him if we could go about a related project. ”
Immediately in agreement, the two began to investigate the cooperative one by one, and finally identified the one of Fengxian Zhuangxing: "This cooperative is relatively more assured, one is able to provide diversified products, chickens, eggs, vegetables, pears; the second, he has equipment like gas bar preservation, cold chain trucks, has his own refrigerated small cold storage, and he also has the ability to transport." For the proper noun of agricultural production, Fan Renjing has already said it very slippery.
In this way, since July this year, in two communities in Yangpu and one in Jing'an, residents can directly buy agricultural products from the Fengxian Jinyuan Fruit and Vegetable Cooperative, Lu Zhengyuan selected an enthusiastic retired resident in the Oak Bay community to be his liaison, and also designed a spreadsheet with a formula to facilitate everyone's operation: "We prefer to wait until we leave, such a system and process can continue." It is necessary for Shanghainese to taste shanghai itself and make the city and the countryside closer together. ”
"Let the people of Shanghai taste their own taste", the reporter was particularly impressed by this sentence heard in the interview. In recent years, walking in the southern suburbs of Fengxian, I have seen and tasted many high-quality agricultural products, but there are not many channels to buy fresh and authentic local ingredients in the city.
Now, in the form of community group buying, under the guidance of several young selected students, fengxian Zhuangxing's agricultural products have come to Xinjiangwan City, solving the sales of agricultural products, but also an excellent way for urban and rural residents to enhance their understanding: "Let the people in the city understand the countryside better, so that the people in the countryside can also sell more good products to the city, make a little more money, and form a positive cycle, a state of mutual assistance between urban and rural areas and common prosperity between urban and rural areas." In Fan Renjing's view, this is his "small contribution" to the integrated development of urban and rural areas.
Author: Shanghai Radio reporter Zhao Yingwen