Chongqing- In 2017, three districts and counties, including Qijiang, Nanchuan, and Shizhu, started cooperating with Tencent Charity and Tencent Southwest Headquarters. They began collecting donations to support Chongqing local communities in fields of new career paths, health services, and improvements to school facilities. Nanchuan shows the public their multiple cropping project, including professional and scientific training from preparing soils to seating all the way through to harvesting.

When the new era of agricultural modernization and development arrived, hundreds of millions of farmers kindled hope for significant changes in the countryside. Many local people wished to integrate Nanchuan’s advantages of mountainous fertile land and humid climate to cultivate chilies and peppers all over the mountains and fields to obtain a heavy harvest.

The formation of the chilies planting industry is a complex and thorny road full of challenges. According to the investigation, chili planting in Nanchuan has a long history. There had been a precedent for large-scale planting once. However, a pillar industry for sustainable development never took root. The current large-scale cultivation of chilies and peppers in Nanchuan is mainly due to the lack of overall planning. Most farmers still grow and sell varieties and miscellaneous chilies and peppers by themselves without any scientific cultivation technology. In this way, both chili yield and farmers’ income are low, so growers lack enthusiasm for sustainable cultivation. However, many growers here would like to cultivate croppings well but suffer from a lack of high-quality seeds, good sales, and modern planting technology.

However, with the support and help of the government, collaborating with Tencent Charity and Tencent Southwest Headquarters, the local farmers’ cultivation industry has been upgraded. On the one hand, they made full use of more than 500 mu (about 82.37 acres) of abandoned land. On the other hand, they employ the local labor force, often the elderly, to solve the local employment problem. At the same time, to solve the technology problem, they provided scientific training to the left-behind labor force, who have specific planting experience and knowledge. The project was soon effective and efficient.

Moreover, Nanchuan also has other crop industries, such as cherry orchards. But in the early fruiting stage of cherry, there are two to three years without production, which means there is no income for growers. Therefore, the government has tried to introduce some other profit crops, such as potatoes, to form multiple cropping, thus bringing considerable income during the dull seasons of cherry cultivation.

Until now, chili and pepper growing support and multiple cropping, supported by Tencent Charity and Tencent Southwest Headquarters, are working. Especially the way the government has trained local people in cultivating chilies, from preparing the soil to seeding all the way through to harvesting. Both abandoned agricultural lands and the left-behind labor force combine to help Muliang Township achieve revitalization.

(Tu Yuting, as an intern, also contributed to this report.)