Speaking of Madagascar, many people may be a scenic, tropical resort, which may be true for the local wealthy, but the truth is that the people of Madagascar have long lived in the shadow of hunger, even using mud, bark, and cacti as food. Fortunately, china's hybrid rice provides them with a new way to live.
Madagascar has been plagued by drought in recent years, especially in 2020, which was the worst in 40 years, which directly affected local agriculture. The main food of the Madagascar people is rice, and drought has led to a massive reduction in food production. In addition, Madagascar has a large number of deserts and forests, and there is not much land suitable for arable land, which is exacerbated by soil erosion and sandstorms in recent years, which have severely desertified arable land.
In order not to let the children starve to death, the parents of Madagascar exhausted all kinds of methods, some even unbelievable: boiling the dug up grass roots and bark, and then adding some clay, mixing together, this is the children's food, it is conceivable that this can only make the children's stomachs temporarily full, there is no nutrition, the children do not even have the strength to take the spoon. According to official data from the Ministry of Health of Madagascar, about 16 per cent of children under 5 years of age in the southern region are in a state of acute malnutrition, while children with acute malnutrition have a 4 times higher mortality rate than healthy children.
The covid-19 outbreak that began last year has also exacerbated the famine in the area. Because of the quarantine measures, many goods transportation and transactions have been interrupted, which has led to a further increase in food prices, for which the rich may only complain twice, but for poor families, the price increase means that they cannot afford to buy and can only starve.
At a critical juncture, my country has reached out to help. Academician Yuan Longping's hybrid rice not only made the whole Chinese people no longer hungry, but also benefited African countries, madagascar is one of them. Since 2008, China has begun to promote Yuan Lao's hybrid rice in Madagascar. When Yuan Lao's team came to this island country, they found that the difficulties were more than imagined, because the natural environment such as climate and soil in different countries was different, and some rice grew well in China, but not here. For example, madagascar has a native frog, which does not like the Chinese frog, which loves pests but eats rice, and the rice is "sneaked" by this frog just after it grows well; there is also a malagasy chameleon, who likes to crawl on the rice field and often overwhelms a large rice field... There are many similar problems, And Elder Yuan's team was not discouraged, but calmed down, concentrated on research, tackled the problems one by one, and taught local farmers to plant by hand.
At first, locals were skeptical about the new rice from China, as Madagascar has a long history of agricultural development and trusted their technology and experience. However, "practice is the only criterion for testing truth", and it is better to say it a thousand times than to do it again. Once, there was a flooding in Madagascar, which was fatal to the impact on rice, and farmers thought that their hard work this year had been lost. Unexpectedly, when the flood receded, the local seedlings had fallen and been washed away, and only China's hybrid rice was still strong. In addition, by the time of harvest, the yield of hybrid rice has tripled compared to before, and it can now reach 10 tons of grain per hectare. At this point, the Malagasy people were completely convinced, and the locals mentioned hybrid rice, which they called "rubabe", which means "the best thing".
The promotion of hybrid rice is a long process, not overnight. By 2020, half of Madagascar's arable land will be planted with China's hybrid rice. Due to the geographical location and climate problems of Madagascar, it is very prone to extreme weather, which has a considerable negative impact on agriculture. It will therefore take time to solve the problem of famine in Madagas. However, the emergence of hybrid rice has greatly alleviated this problem and given hope to locals. Hybrid rice was printed on Madagascar's largest denomination banknote, letting the nation know that this miraculous seed from the East had almost saved the country.
After the death of Academician Yuan Longping, the Minister of Agriculture of Madagascar specially sent a condolence, saying that "through the development of hybrid rice technology, Academician Yuan's dream of 'letting the whole world have a full meal' has been realized in Madagascar." "Yes, although Elder Yuan has passed away, the material and spiritual wealth he left behind has truly benefited all mankind." When we eat, don't forget this old man who has dedicated his life to the rice fields. Eat well and cherish every grain of rice in order to be worthy of Yuan Lao's contribution.