Why Are Smallholders Unwilling to Grow Greenhouse Vegetables?
Thriving industries are the foundation of rural revitalisation. Perhaps inspired by Shouguang, Shandong, the centrepiece of agricultural development in central and western China has often been the promotion of greenhouse vegetable cultivation. Gong County (a pseudonym) in central China is no exception.
A few years ago, during the Targeted Poverty Alleviation campaign, the Gong County government introduced greenhouse vegetable cultivation—with its strong market returns—to help farmers prosper quickly. It rolled out subsidy policies in an attempt to embed greenhouse vegetables into local farmers’ livelihoods.
Given that the government provides greenhouses, seedlings, and technical guidance free of charge, what exactly causes their passive acceptance of greenhouse vegetables?
I. Land Transfer or Land Grabbing?
The irony is that Gong County lies in a hilly, low-mountain region, with roughly two million mu of hilly terrain and very little flat, open land. Promoting greenhouse vegetable cultivation locally therefore calls for significant upfront investment: farmers’ fragmented plots must be consolidated and levelled into contiguous blocks, and water, electricity, and road access must be brought in to support agricultural inputs and product transport during production.
The consequence has been that paddy fields once growing rice and white lotus seeds have been converted to dryland, and diverse terrain has been levelled into uniform blocks, drastically reducing the area Chen Village devotes to traditional rice, white lotus seeds, and even tobacco. The few flat, open plots with convenient water and transport access have all been taken over by greenhouse vegetables.
However, because of the rapid expansion and the costs of land rent and labour, the enterprise can sustain operations on only 800 mu of greenhouses. Of the remaining 1,200 mu in Chen Village, 200 mu are returned to farmers rent-free as required by policy; 600 mu have been re-rented from farmers by the collective and subleased to incoming professional farmers from Guizhou, Hunan, and other regions, who grow strawberries, leafy greens, watermelons, and other crops; and 400 mu have been left fallow for two consecutive years.
If the original intent of land transfer was to improve resource utilisation, the case of Chen Village clearly has not delivered on that promise.
II. High Costs After Subsidies Expire
To help the greenhouse vegetable industry take root, the government invested in high-standard farmland improvement, actively attracted industrial and commercial capital to build steel-framed linked greenhouses, and offered a 50% subsidy on the per-mu construction cost.
The government also stipulated that once vegetable enterprises complete greenhouses, they should give priority to local poverty-registered households for employment in the sheds; and for poverty-registered households wishing to farm themselves, rent-free greenhouse access is provided.
Encouraged by these favourable policies, Chen Guilin, a 43-year-old villager of Chen Village, saw market potential in greenhouse vegetables. During the 2018 Spring Festival, after discussing with his wife, he decided to give up migrant work. With a policy halving the rent, he leased four linked vegetable greenhouses from the enterprise, primarily growing aubergines, peppers, and other vegetables.
But Chen Guilin soon found that greenhouse vegetables were not as simple as tending a home vegetable plot. Pesticides, seedlings, fertiliser, agricultural plastic film, irrigation, and labour all proved too costly. Although greenhouses boosted yields, his scale still could not match that of the vegetable enterprises, so he could only sell in volume at low prices through the enterprise’s sales channels.
By the end of 2020, the poverty alleviation campaign had ended, and the senior official who had championed vegetable greenhouses changed posts. The reward and subsidy policies for vegetable greenhouses were cut accordingly, while leasing costs rose. Many vegetable enterprises could no longer sustain such high-input production. The Chen Guilin couple also felt it was no longer worthwhile, so they gave up greenhouse vegetables and returned to migrant work.
III. The “Invisible Wall” of Technology
Before the greenhouse vegetable industry took off in Gong County, most farmers grew tobacco, potatoes, and similar crops. But those leasing vegetable greenhouses typically grow aubergines, which belong to the same Solanaceae family as tobacco and potatoes and cannot be crop-rotated with them. The soil previously used for tobacco or potatoes must be disinfected before aubergine seedlings can be transplanted. Experience in open-field cultivation—suited to the traditional crop mix—can barely be put to use in a greenhouse.
In theory, the relatively sealed growing space of a greenhouse allows the entire growth cycle of vegetable crops to be managed by adjusting temperature, humidity, light and heat, and water and fertiliser, thereby buffering against adverse natural conditions.
In practice, however, judging when a vegetable crop needs more humidity or heat, and how to regulate temperature and humidity through ventilation and heating equipment, relies entirely on the operator’s own ability and experience.
Take aubergines as an example: they thrive in heat, and during the transplanting stage, sufficiently high nighttime temperatures inside the greenhouse must be maintained. They also crave sunlight, so farmers who want off-season aubergine harvests must open the shade cloth promptly during the day and close it in the evening, while running hot-air heaters to control the temperature. Aubergines love water, and the irrigation frequency after fruit setting must be several times the usual rate—but over-irrigating at once will cause the roots and leaves to waterlog and rot, so ventilation must be managed promptly. During the flowering and fruit-setting stage, growers must also remove excess lateral branches below the first aubergine on the main stem, pinch off sick, yellowing, aged foliage and deformed or diseased fruit to maintain ventilation and light penetration within the canopy and prevent wasted nutrients…
All of this underscores that the daily fine management of water, fertiliser, light, and pests and diseases in greenhouse vegetables constitutes a whole new body of knowledge and practical experience. Producers must invest considerable time, energy, and labour simply to secure yields and returns.
This technical threshold acts like an “invisible wall”, separating those inside the greenhouse from those outside it.
Chen Chengren, a 45-year-old farmer from Chen Village, reflected with some feeling: “At my age, I can still manage some more complex vegetables—aubergines, peppers, that sort of thing, which demand higher technical skill. But for someone like my father, aged sixty, it’s not suitable. First, he lacks the physical strength; second, he lacks the technical know-how.”
Yet in Gong County, like much of central China, those left behind in the villages are mostly elderly farmers over sixty, like Chen Chengren’s father. Fearing a loss, they prefer to grow open-field vegetables they know well, or put up simple greenhouses for winter crops. They grow a little less, sell at local markets bit by bit, and though it amounts to little, at least they carry no risk.
IV. The Difficulty of Hiring Labour
Yet hiring suitable workers is another vexing problem.
About 85% of Gong County’s young people have migrated to the coastal regions for work. Those left behind in the villages—whether in terms of age, skills, or physical fitness—fall far short of the physically demanding, fast-paced pace that greenhouse vegetables require.
As Huang Jinchun, the stationed official in Zhu Village, put it: “A large number of rural people still go out to work elsewhere, so enterprises frequently face labour shortages. Some complain the wages are too low and the rules too strict; others find it stifling inside the greenhouses. The bosses have tried all sorts of measures—they hired young people, but those young workers themselves cannot keep up, because you need to be both technically proficient and capable of managing people. The villagers are used to going their own way, so they are hard to manage. Middle-aged women are reluctant to answer calls to work—for instance, aubergines and peppers must be pruned to technical specifications. When you ask the farmers to prune, they cannot bear to cut; they feel it damages the young plants. Traditional farming mindsets clash with scientific cultivation methods: they know how to farm—and yet they don’t.”
Larger vegetable enterprises are often willing to pay high wages (2018–2019 rates: 100 yuan per day for male workers, 90 yuan for female workers) to employ farmers. For ordinary growers, the upward pressure on wages from enterprises means they can only turn to relatives and friends for help when facing a labour shortfall, yet the resulting hiring costs can further squeeze already thin margins.
For example, labour costs for one season’s aubergines in a single mu of greenhouse can reach as high as 3,000 yuan. It is little wonder that grower Chen Keli said: “Growing vegetables takes personal hardship to turn a profit. Those bosses have money to hire people, so wages go up. We ordinary folk would rather let the crop wither than pay for labour.”
Greenhouse vegetables do not lack market prospects or policy support, but their demanding nature makes them better suited to younger and middle-aged farmers who have a certain financial base, adapt quickly to new technologies, possess the energy for the work, and can better gauge market conditions.
Clearly, this is at odds with the ages and skills of the farmers left behind in Gong County’s rural villages.
Foodthink Says
Editor: Ze’en