What Does Agricultural Training Look Like Without Pesticide and Fertiliser Sales?
On 12 April, a week after Grain Rain, eastern Sichuan had seen several consecutive showers, easing a drought that had persisted since the Spring Festival. Rice seedlings in the fields were now nearing transplanting season.
That afternoon, senior agronomist Yuan Yong and a colleague travelled from Jianyang City to Zaizi Village to inspect the seedlings in the partner plots and deliver rice cultivation training to local smallholder farmers.
“I’m curious about one thing,” Yuan Yong said to the handful of farmers who had trickled in. “Why have you three households decided to attend our training today?” An elderly man surnamed Jiang broke the silence. “Well, these days everyone wants to have a go at this green food approach.”
Forgoing pesticides and herbicides, skipping the ploughing before transplanting, and covering the soil with straw afterwards—what the villagers refer to as “green farming”—is the no-till mulching ecological rice cultivation technique that Yuan Yong has been promoting since 2010.
“Once the straw mulching is laid down, field management later on pretty much leaves you nothing to do but play mahjong.” Yuan’s Sichuan-style wit dispelled the formal atmosphere of the room and sparked my curiosity: would farmers truly embrace this departure from traditional methods? After all these years, how exactly do they facilitate the adoption of the technique across different counties and cities in Sichuan?
So I headed to Zaizi Village to observe Yuan delivering agricultural training to the locals. The scattered group of uncles and aunts seated in the farmhouse courtyard met Yuan’s opening banter with quiet reserve. Yet as the explanation progressed, their discussion grew noticeably animated.
I. What is no-till mulching?
Compared with conventional agriculture, this no-till mulching system not only enhances crop health and drought resilience while reducing labour demands, but also cuts down on external inputs such as pesticides and chemical fertilisers. With a sheet of blank paper before him, Yuan sketched out diagrams as he walked through the specific steps for field management.
The first step is preparing the field. This ensures an even surface so that transplanted seedlings can take root and thrive. Locally, farmers typically deep-plough and fine-harrow the soil. Yuan Yong, however, advises against this.
While tilling does loosen the soil and improve aeration, it simultaneously disrupts soil structure and microbial life. Combined with years of pesticide and chemical fertiliser use, deep ploughing and fine harrowing only worsen soil compaction. When soil health is compromised, its resilience to extreme weather and disease diminishes. “It is difficult not to rely on chemicals with soil in this condition,” he notes. For this reason, he has long advocated for no-till farming.
A crucial part of field preparation is ‘kaixiang’ (creating raised beds and drainage channels), which involves digging a trench every 1.6 metres (five chi) across the levelled field to control water inflow and outflow. Compared with traditional flood irrigation, this approach ensures the soil absorbs the right amount of moisture rather than becoming waterlogged.
Each channel is roughly 25 centimetres wide—slightly wider than a standard hoe—and dug to a depth of about half a hoe’s length. A perimeter trench is also excavated around the field to connect the internal channels. The raised strips of land between these channels form the beds where the rice is cultivated. The soil excavated from the trenches is mounded along either side to build up the beds. “That is all there is to preparing the field,” Yuan explains.
In no-till mulched rice cultivation, labour is primarily directed towards the initial bed-creation phase, but this offsets the work normally required for ploughing during field preparation. Provided the straw mulch is applied adequately, weeding becomes unnecessary. Furthermore, once the channels are established in the first year, they require no additional maintenance, significantly reducing long-term labour demands.
The Central Sichuan Hills, operating as a rice-rapeseed rotation zone, rely on the oilcake from annual rapeseed pressing as a natural fertiliser for the paddies. Once the rapeseed cake has been spread as a baseline dressing, the process moves to its most critical stage: flooding the fields for seedling transplanting.
The standing water in each plot must not exceed one centimetre. Once it has slowly percolated into the soil, transplanting can begin. Yuan Yong gives a highly evocative description of the ideal soil moisture level: “Wait until there’s no visible layer of water across the plot, and only the low-lying hollows hold a few scattered puddles. That’s your cue to transplant.”
The planting layout requires careful planning. Rather than the conventional approach of planting multiple rows per plot with just a single seedling per hill, Yuan Yong recommends limiting each plot to four rows. He groups three seedlings per hill, arranging them in an equilateral triangle with roughly 10 cm between them. The hills themselves are spaced 10 cm apart along the rows as you progress.
“It might look sparse, but it really isn’t,” chimes in Uncle Zhong, returning from a game of mahjong to add his thoughts to the group. Yuan Yong explains that this arrangement improves both airflow and light penetration, allowing the rice plants to tiller more vigorously. The method cuts seed requirements by nearly 50 per cent compared with conventional planting, making it particularly well-suited to regions where sunlight is less abundant.
Once the seedlings are in, only one operation remains: applying the straw mulch. This straw also comes from the husks left over after the rapeseed harvest. According to Yuan Yong, this step delivers multiple benefits—weed suppression, enhanced fertiliser efficiency, warmer soil temperatures, and improved moisture retention. During periods of severe drought, the mulch helps the soil hold on to moisture far more effectively. “That’s really all there is to it,” he says.
“This would be especially suitable for dry plots.”
“Exactly. You simply make do with the existing raised beds and use them as they are.”
“Right, precisely. It’s particularly well-suited to double-cropping fields.”
Participants took turns describing the layout of their own plots, weighing whether this approach would suit them. As the conversation warmed up, Yuan Yong naturally invited Uncle Zhong to share his experience.
Now in his seventies, Uncle Zhong began partnering with Yuan Yong in his second year. Beyond emphasising the importance of following the procedure step by step, he repeatedly advised the group to cut back on chemical fertilisers and herbicides. “It’s only natural to feel anxious when weeds appear, but you must never resort to herbicides. Even a slight misapplication can harm both the seedlings and the crops.”
To Yuan Yong, this is merely a temporary setback. Provided the field is well-suited and the system is followed consistently over the years, both soil quality and yields will improve. This is a result they have verified through more than a decade of outreach. Among the farmers he works with in neighbouring villages, the highest yield exceeded 1,300 jin per mu. “They were using an old landrace variety saved from their own seeds. Even experts from the agricultural research institute were sceptical when they came to assess the harvest, especially since it was a dry year,” Yuan remarked.
So, when asked whether he still had confidence in the method, Uncle Zhong retorted, “How could I possibly lose faith?” This year, he has secured a new plot to trial the no-till and cover cropping system.
After listening to the hour-long briefing, Elder Jiang was most convinced by the system’s emphasis on soil health and labour-saving practices, and decided to set aside two fen of land to give it a go. “Once we’ve gained some experience this year, I’ll expand to seven or eight fen next year,” he said.
II. A Different Approach to Promotion
Yuan Yong notes that this outreach model differs significantly from those previously used by the “Home Action” initiative. Compared to a door-to-door approach targeting individual smallholders, partnering with the village collective offers clear advantages: lower communication overhead and greater efficiency. Provided the village party secretary can be won over, the system can be implemented on a large scale.
Secretary Jiang, born in the 1980s, has been a pivotal figure in this effort. He first met Yuan Yong at an agricultural technology promotion conference, where he was learning about high-yield rice mulching techniques. Two years ago, seeking to revitalise the village’s collective economy, Secretary Jiang partnered with Chengdu’s “Home Action” initiative and adopted their no-till mulch ecological farming methods.
“Before we arrived, he hadn’t yet embraced the idea of ecological farming,” explained Hu Xiaoping, director of Chengdu’s “Home Action” initiative. “But he frequently attended external conferences and noticed a common thread among the model villages he visited: they were all practising ecological agriculture.”
Prior to 2022, Secretary Jiang had already been managing the collective enterprise for a year. “But we took a heavy loss because we spent too much on inputs,” Yuan Yong noted. “The crux of ecological agriculture lies in reducing external inputs, rather than simply swapping chemical fertilisers and pesticides for organic alternatives.”
By October that year, the 1.5-mu ecological wheat plot jointly managed by both parties proved an immediate success. Without any pesticides or chemical fertilisers, and employing the same no-till mulch method, it yielded 1,200 jin (600 kg) per mu—400 jin (200 kg) more than the local conventional average, with significantly fewer pests and diseases. That same year, taking a calculated risk, Secretary Jiang also refrained from spraying pesticides on the collective’s several hundred mu of conventional wheat, which still produced a solid harvest.
The success of the ecological wheat project fostered immediate trust between the two parties. The following year, the village collective expanded its ecological wheat acreage and extended the technique to their rapeseed fields. This year, the collective’s rice paddies also transitioned to no-till mulch cultivation.
The rapeseed crop, grown in rotation with rice, provided the paddies with natural fertiliser and mulch. This not only saved labour and cut input costs but also kept production expenses under tight control and minimised pest outbreaks, fulfilling the initial expectations of both Secretary Jiang and “Home Action” when they began their partnership.
Today, Secretary Jiang’s primary concern has shifted to sales. “We used to worry about whether we could grow it; now we’re worried about whether we can sell it.”
In response, Yuan Yong and his colleagues have been advising him on the concept of marketing produce by quality grades. Acting on their suggestion, Secretary Jiang set up a WeChat group to connect existing and potential buyers of ecological produce. At every key stage of the growing cycle, he updates the group with progress reports and quality test results.
Now in the third year of transitioning to ecological farming, Secretary Jiang still grapples with certain questions about his products, and he frequently encounters scepticism from customers: “You’re charging a few yuan more for this. What exactly is the benefit?”
Although Secretary Jiang has yet to find the perfect pitch to convince consumers, the improvements ecological farming brings to the soil are entirely tangible. After two years of collaboration, he has fully embraced the ecological farming philosophy championed by Yuan Yong’s team. “After a few years of returning crop residues to the fields, the soil’s microbial ecosystem has established a healthy balance that is entirely self-sustaining.”
He also uses this remark to open his training sessions.
III. Technology Serves Life
Shifting the mindset of independent smallholder farmers is far from straightforward.
Before the training session began, Yuan Yong accompanied Secretary Jiang to inspect the seedling beds on the village’s collective land. These plots are tended by villagers employed by the collective. In some fields, the rice seedlings were struggling. Upon inquiry, they learned that the villagers had recently applied an extra dose of manure slurry, causing fertilizer burn.
“A light application of diluted manure a week beforehand, followed by a rinse with clear water, would have been more than enough,” remarked one of Yuan Yong’s colleagues. They explained that in Shuanghe Village, where they have collaborated for over ten years, they no longer encounter such issues; the farmers there have now fully mastered the technique.
What accounted for such a transformation in Shuanghe Village, I asked Yuan Yong.
He told me it was the starting point for their campaign to introduce no-till mulching. In truth, it relied on a fundamentally different model of agricultural extension.
When they first arrived in Shuanghe Village in 2010, they weighed various conventional models—such as the ‘company-plus-farmer’ or ‘expert-plus-association’ approaches. In the end, they opted to begin with community-building initiatives entirely separate from agricultural extension. By helping to set up co-operative-backed arts troupes, seniors’ clubs, and women’s associations, they cultivated interest-based groups that encouraged villagers to organise Double Ninth Festival gatherings, square dancing, and singing competitions.
Only once the village atmosphere had become more vibrant did they begin promoting the ecological farming methods of no-till mulching. By then, trust had already been established between both parties.
“People naturally assume we’re looking out for their best interests,” Yuan Yong explained. “They’re no longer worried about whether the technique will reduce their yields. What matters to them now is that they have a place to sing, dance, and enjoy themselves.”
Over three years, the smallholder farmers in Shuanghe Village came to accept this group of urban-based technicians, along with the farming philosophy they brought. Today, that philosophy is being replicated in villages across the region, such as at the training session I observed in Zhaozi Village.
Straight after the session, Yuan Yong and his colleagues pressed on without a moment’s delay to the nearby village of Baila. This year, the ‘Home and Village’ initiative has allocated a 2,000-yuan budget to Baila Village, encouraging local women and seniors to gather in the square for evening dances.
“For the time being, we need to run both outreach models side by side.” Technical extension for smallholders continues apace, while partnerships with village collectives advance in parallel. Building up the rural collective economy is the prevailing priority for local authorities, and there is no shortage of young village secretaries, like Secretary Jiang, willing to give it a shot. It is a direction best embraced.
Whichever model is adopted, “Homeland Action” appears uninterested in wading into the current debates surrounding ecological agriculture. Nor is its focus limited to the income gains yielded by new technologies. Indeed, even the veteran farmers at the Xingzhai Village training sessions pay little mind to purely economic returns. What truly captivates them is the broader transformation taking place in rural production and everyday life.
I departed Baila Village as dusk was falling, the village’s evening broadcast already drifting through the air. It brought to mind a personal account penned by Yuan Yong.
He argues that the true purpose of agriculture lies in “nourishment” rather than “profit”. Relying solely on crop sales to lift farmers into broad prosperity is an uphill task. The very nature of farming dictates that its paramount roles are social—ensuring people have food on the table and eat well—and ecological, by alleviating the environmental degradation wrought by industry, rather than merely economic: generating cash.
Shadowing their work across Jianyang has revealed to me another facet of agriculture: beyond its role as an industry, it is fundamentally a philosophy for how we might live better.
All photographs, unless otherwise credited, are provided by the author.
Editor: Ze’en