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Threat to rice farming

According to ”Grain”, in mountainous Yunnan, local ethnic minorities like Hani and Dai have farmed rice in the terraced fields on the hillside for thousands of years. A rich diversity of rice varieties thrive here and local people retained the tradition of seed exchange and rice worship.

Exquisite irrigation systems built by ancient Hani people have ensured the steady output from the terraced paddy fields. Manure used to be the principal fertilizer.

But things have changed significantly over the past few decades. Chemical fertilizers and pesticides have been widely used as hybrid rice is being spread to these regions. And their impact has been felt by local farmers in many aspects. While rice output has increased, the soil has been contaminated by overuse of chemicals and hardened. The fertility of the land has been severely affected. In some extreme cases, the soil has been so contaminated that the farmers have to change seed types each year for a decent yield.

There is also another risk looming. The Ministry of Agriculture is now mulling over applications made by several Chinese research teams to commercialize genetically modified (GM) rice varieties they have developed. If this becomes reality, China may very likely become the first country in the world that allows commercialization of GM rice, which is not good news for Chinese farmers.

China began trials on ecological agriculture in the mid-1980s, when the negative side of chemical agriculture was surfacing. Farmers normally lack the information and market access that are essential for such types of farming, and chemical fertilizers and pesticides becomes a natural choice. Another important issue facing the industry is that farming rice is no longer a lucrative business in many rural areas, including Yunnan. Young men prefer to work in cities than toil in the field and rice farming has been shifted to elderly workers.



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