Project of Beautiful Pastoral Land at Rivers Junction

On January 6, in the fields of Chalin First Village, Dachen Town, workers were stepping up the construction of a project aimed to upgrade the originally abandoned fields into a renovated landscape. The project is defined “beautiful pastoral project” and the person in charge said: “For the first phase, we have already completed the transformation of over 26 hectares of abandoned land into beautiful farmland, and in the second phase we will upgrade the project to version 2.0, planning to transform 79 hectares of farmland into renovated landscape. By this autumn, Dachen will provide locals and visitors with the idyllic scenery of paddy fields.

As a major agricultural town, Dachen has undertaken the task of creating a strong provincial-level agricultural characteristic town in recent years, adding 7.1 sq. km of agricultural standard land and renovating 80 hectares of wasteland. In order to further deepen the reform of agricultural standard land, and create beautiful farms across the region, Dachen strengthened farmland management and protection as a key task in 2021. The town also insisted on developing high standards in combining farmland construction with large-scale operations, on the promotion of land renovation and reuse, on the transformation of land that is not suitable for planting, and on turning wasteland into good land. The overall policy aims to help increase income in rural areas, build and renovate more than 30 kilometers of farmland irrigation channels and field roads, and complete four beautiful pastoral projects.

A beautiful rural area was completed at the entrance of Dumen Village. There, large tracts of uniform farmland, what used to be rice fields cultivated differently by every household, and the roads beside the farmland were all muddy. After construction started last year, disordered rice fields have become a beautiful landscape, and the muddy trails have become cement roads. Fu Jianwen, Party secretary of Dumen Village, said: “We still have 2 hectares of beautiful pastoral transformation project in the process of finalizing. Then, the land will be contracted to large grain growers to plant rice in the form of overall circulation. It is expected to bring over 1,000 RMB of income for villagers every 0.07 hectares. The village entrance forms a contiguous area of nearly 20 hectares of beautiful farmland. When autumn arrives, the golden rice fields will attract a large amount of tourists to visit and take pictures of such a beautiful rural landscape.”

The Agriculture and Rural Affairs Office of Dachen Town confirmed that at present, Dachen Town has built three beautiful rural areas. Gong Miaoying, director of the office, said: “Under the premise of not affecting the attributes of the soil, the farmland will be upgraded into a renovated landscape. Version 1.0 of the beautiful pastoral project is primarily focused on land renovation, breaking the scattered and weak patterns of traditional agriculture. Now, we have upgraded the beautiful countryside: version 2.0 turns farmland into something more than just ‘good land.’ We will not only plant rice uniformly, pave trails, plant flowers, etc., but we will also increase the popularity of science, and set up publicity boards and popular science stations. We aim to create a farmland park to facilitate visitors and students to enter in touch with rural features, further deepen the integration of agriculture and tourism, and create a new scene of urban and rural integration, common prosperity and beautiful rural revitalization.”

At present, the beautiful pastoral projects of the village of Dumen, Chalin First Village, Mafan, and Hongqi Tangwu Natural Village are basically completed. While the Beautiful Pastoral Land Project at Rivers Junction (Shuangjiangkou) in Hongqi Village is already assigned and ready to start construction, two beautiful pastoral projects in Huangshengtang and Beijinshan are ready to be tendered. These projects are expected to be completed before July 2022, which will result in the creation of almost 80 hectares of beautiful rural landscape in the town of Dachen. (By Chen Jianxian, translated by Marco Lovisetto, edited by Mariam Ayad)