Crops in cyberspace(4)

Attracting talent back

Of the 253 current residents of Nanjiushui, only two, Li and An Delin, have received a high school education and An is more than 40 years of age. Most of the young people have left the village and now work in cities. The women and the elderly who stayed in the village have become the main force in local farming.

"It is hard to persuade them to accept advanced farming technologies and modern marketing concepts," said Li.

"Seeing friends of my own age leaving and making a lot of money, sometimes I also had the urge to move out," Li said. "However, after I learned to use a camera and the micro blog and organized my fellow villagers to sell walnuts online at a profit, some of my friends told me that they wanted to come back to help, so long as they could also make money."

Urbanization, the movement of large swathes of country people to cities and employment in the secondary and tertiary industries, has resulted in the nation's rural population falling from 82.08 percent in 1978 to 50.32 percent in 2010.

According to statistics from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, 2011 saw the country's urban population overtake the rural for the first time.

Liu said that attracting highly educated young people back to the villages is the key to solving the talent shortage in agriculture development.

More than 30 people in Nanjiushui received a high school education, but only two have stayed in the village. Liu believes that modern methods of agricultural production and marketing will attract them back when they can see their value being realized on the rural stage.

Sun Yanqing and his wife, Meng Hexiang, were both born in the village but left to work in a coal mine a number of years ago. However, this year they decided to return.

Sun said that if they can plant walnut trees and other produce more efficiently, they will be able to earn as much money as they could by working in the city.

Meng Hexiang said there is more freedom in working at home and it means she can spend more time with their children.

"The terrible condition of the road and the poor market used to be big problems," she said. "Now the new road is completed and we have found a new way to sell our produce, we feel that both business and life will be much easier than before."