MORTON -- Hundreds of Minnesota farmers take in the Minnesota Corn Growers Association's annual Ag Expo at Jackpot Junction with thoughts of bringing back ideas to their own farming operations.
Luo Xiaodong is taking in the Expo with intentions of bringing ideas back to millions of farmers.
Xiaodong is the deputy director of the Sichuan Provincial Bureau of Agricultural Machinery, headquartered in Sichuan, China.
He is currently participating in a three-month job shadow program at the Minnesota Department of Agriculture, where he and a colleague from his country work alongside their American counterparts. His role with the Sichuan Provincial Bureau is to introduce modern machinery into the operations of the province's farms. Specifically, Xiaodong works to assist farmers with the installation of irrigation systems for their rice growing operations.
No different than here, Xiaodong said farmers in Sichuan province must contend with the vagaries of the weather. The government is encouraging more irrigation to improve rice production.
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Also just like agriculture in Minnesota, farming in China today is all about increasing production and becoming more efficient. But the starting points are different, according to Xiaodong's description of things.
Sichuan province -- located in southwestern China -- is home to 87 million people. More than 70 percent of the people are engaged in agriculture, he said.
Small, family farms are the norm, only they come in a much smaller scale than Minnesota's family farms. Most farm families tend to less than one acre of land, according to Xiaodong. The province's farm products are raised for local consumption, but many are also sold to neighboring provinces. The province also exports a sizable share of its farm production to markets in Hong Kong, South Asia and Russia, he said.
Productivity is increasing as Chinese farms adopt a model well-known here: Farms are getting larger in size and relying on more machinery and technology.
China's skyrocketing economic growth in the manufacturing sector comes at an opportune time. It is providing jobs for the young people leaving the land as farms grow in size. Xiaodong said one-fourth of the country's farm population -- representing 15 million family farms -- has left the land for jobs in the cities.
Xiaodong said China has in common with the United States the traditions of an agrarian lifestyle and an appreciation for those values. Speaking of the country's farmers, he said: "They are the base of the country."
