When Heat Becomes the New Normal, These Farmers Choose a Different Way of Life (Part 1)
I. Climate Change Through the Eyes of Smallholders: Spring Drought, Soil, and Grain Storage
The rain began on the evening of 17 June, alternating between heavy squalls and lighter spells, and continued well into the following afternoon. “We had a few showers after Chinese New Year, but it’s been dry ever since.” Over the past two months, Ganjiadian Village in Ziyang, Sichuan, where Yang lives, has seen virtually no effective rainfall. The curled leaves on the maize stalks were a quiet warning to visitors of this spring’s drought.
The day before the rain arrived, local weather reports recorded temperatures of 39°C.
Spring drought represents Yang Xiuyou’s most direct encounter with climate change since returning to his home village seven or eight years ago. In his memory, a drought so severe and unbroken only occurred in the 1970s.
After lunch, Yuan Yong asked Yang for a pair of Wellington boots and set off to inspect the fields. Yuan Yong is a senior agronomist at the Agricultural Comprehensive Service Centre of Dongxi Subdistrict, Jianyang City, and serves as the technical advisor for agricultural projects at the “Chengdu Home Action Public Welfare Service Centre” (hereafter “Home Action”), a non-profit organisation. His visit was chiefly to assess the current condition of the ecological rice crops.
Heading down into Yang Xiuyou’s paddy field, Yuan Yong called out the soil meter readings to his colleagues at Home Action: “pH 5.6, temperature 26°C, soil depth roughly 10 centimetres.” Further into that same paddy, he recorded a pH of 6.4 at 26°C. On a neighbouring plot, the readings were pH 5.1 at 25°C. That land belonged to another villager who had only just begun adopting ecological farming principles this year.
For rice, slightly acidic to neutral soil is ideal for nutrient uptake, typically falling within a pH range of 5.5 to 6.5. In conventionally farmed fields, the use of acidic inputs such as pesticides and chemical fertilisers usually drives the soil pH below 5.5. Yet after three years of ecological cultivation, the pH of Yang Xiuyou’s soil has shifted noticeably.
“The soil’s natural recovery process is actually quite swift. Look, in just two or three years yours has already climbed into the six-point range. With these baseline figures, you ought to feel fairly confident about it all.” Yang Xiuyou stood by the field bund, quietly taking in Yuan Yong’s analysis.
This marks his third year adopting the climate-friendly rice cultivation techniques promoted by Home Action.
Unlike traditional flood irrigation, this method involves transplanting seedlings onto raised beds, keeping water only in the furrows to reduce the volume of irrigation required for the paddies. The ecological approach also stresses the use of local heirloom varieties wherever possible, alongside no-till farming and straw mulching. This means avoiding manual or mechanical soil tillage, and covering the fields with straw after transplanting to suppress weeds, enhance fertility, regulate soil temperature, and retain moisture.
The technique strictly prohibits chemical fertilisers, pesticides, and herbicides, which might sound rather “unorthodox”. Yet, drawn by its water-saving and drought-resistant qualities, as well as the reduction in input costs, Yang Xiuyou was intrigued. Still, the first year’s trial did not go smoothly.
Hampered by the spring drought of 2023, the first crop of rice could not be planted. To cut his losses, Yang switched to growing soybeans on the two mu in July, applying the same no-till, mulched approach. While most soybean crops in the village suffered yield losses from powdery mildew, Yang’s field flourished. He eventually sold his eco-soybeans at 4 yuan per jin, compared to the 3 yuan per jin going for conventional soybeans on the market.
“I was initially going to price them at 5 yuan a jin, but then decided to let it go at that.”
“Most people try to sell high, but he’s keen on selling low,” Yuan Yong remarked with a smile from the sidelines.
“The only real cost is the seeds, after all,” Yang laughed.
Last year, the two mu of ecological rice finally came to fruition, with the first harvest yielding over 700 jin per mu. Following this crop, the stubble sent up new shoots and panicles, bringing in a second harvest of over 100 jin of ratoon rice by autumn. On top of that, he planted some maize, a crop far more drought-tolerant than rice.
Yang Xiuyou seals all the harvested grain in plastic bags and packs it into iron storage drums to see his family through the year, barring over 100 jin of ratoon rice – most of which the birds had already eaten while it was drying on his roof.
“Villagers in more than one place are putting grain aside; we’ve come across this in quite a few villages,” says Hu Xiaoping, director of the Home Ground Initiative. He identifies climate change as one reason behind the decision not to sell. Hit by extreme weather, farmers worry that land which produced good rice this year might not be productive next year. Hu Xiaoping observes that some of the villagers they engage with are storing enough grain to sustain a family for three or four years.
The villagers’ concerns are well-founded. Driven by climate change, droughts and extreme heat events across south-west China are increasing markedly. In Yang Xiuyou’s village, the spring drought was so severe the year before last that rice simply could not be planted. Last year, the crops did go in, but the harvest was nearly lost – following the Beginning of Autumn solar term, eastern Sichuan endured consecutive days of extreme heat. The fields were unworkable during daylight hours, forcing many farmers to head out with head torches at 10 pm to cut the rice. They say they have never before encountered weather this hot.
II. We Must Not Tackle Climate Change by Exacerbating It
Particularly for those who depend on the weather for their livelihood and feed the rest of the world—the farmers—what is the answer?
Hu Xiaoping graduated from China Agricultural University with a degree in Rural Regional Development and brings deep expertise in rural community development, ecological agriculture, and local economies. In 2017, he founded Jiayuan Action, an organisation dedicated to agriculture, community governance, and local cultural preservation. As an NGO director, Xiaoping’s life is split into two parallel worlds that operate in different languages and occasionally intersect: when out fundraising or negotiating projects, he speaks Mandarin, sometimes English, constantly fielding the same familiar questions from domestic and international climate philanthropists: How will China reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and what innovative pathways exist for rural areas to adapt to climate change?
Back in the village, he switches to the local dialect, chatting with older women about the flavour of traditional crop varieties and the problem of pesticide bags being carelessly discarded. Bridging external resources with village needs, and translating between the two distinct discourses of the outside world and the village, is a fundamental skill for rural development workers. Over the past few years, more NGOs have taken root in rural areas, attempting to address the complications brought on by climate change—for the increasingly hot and dry provinces of the southwest, interventions range from the modest, such as installing fans in community activity rooms, to the substantial, like building micro-reservoirs, all of which have proven useful.
Yet in Xiaoping’s view, confronting climate change is not about shifting narratives or mere awareness-raising (i.e. simply letting farmers know that “climate change” exists). Rather, it lies in reforming the agricultural systems that leave farmers vulnerable to climatic shocks, enabling them to forge a livelihood that lives in harmony with nature while offering enough return to sustain their dignity as working people.
They are currently rolling out this “experiment” across several villages in Sichuan. Yuan Yong, who spends most of the year embedded in these communities providing technical training to farmers, offers a succinct perspective: “We cannot tackle climate change with short-sighted measures that only exacerbate it.”
At its core, the initiative’s approach rests on two principles: first, promoting ecological farming techniques. The heart of this lies in rebuilding healthy soil through no-till mulching, as extensive scientific research confirms that soil acts as a vital buffer for agriculture against climate change; second, emphasising farmers’ autonomy by reducing their reliance on external inputs and strengthening the cohesion of self-organised community groups. These two principles reinforce one another. Ecological farming techniques free farmers from the control of chemical fertiliser, pesticide, and seed suppliers, while everyday practices such as mutual learning visits and seed exchanges deepen the bonds among the elderly left behind in rural areas. In a sense, this also fulfils a role akin to “socialised eldercare”.
Last year in Zaizi Village, Jianyang, I sat in on a training session hosted by Yuan Yong on ecological rice farming using no-till raised-bed preparation. Rather than opening in his professional capacity as an agronomist, he struck up a conversation with the group about health and spring droughts. Yuan Yong invited Grandpa Zhong to share his practical experience; he was a local farmer who had adopted the no-till raised-bed method for rice cultivation the previous year.
Initially, Grandpa Zhong was somewhat hesitant, but the moment the topic turned to prevailing pesticide use, he let his guard down. “Under no circumstances should you be spraying pesticides!” As the session drew to a close, Grandpa Zhong bade everyone farewell with a laugh: “City dwellers have to pay to go to a gym just to get some exercise. I don’t need that in the slightest! Working out in the fields each day, I give every muscle in my body a proper workout.”
Yuan Yong noted that physical and mental well-being was the most frequently cited concern when villagers discussed their needs. During the project’s baseline survey, the team had conducted household visits to gauge local priorities. They had assumed income would be the primary concern, only to discover that health topped the list.
“Second was care for those left behind in the village, followed by effective parent–child education, whereas securing adequate household provisions only came in at number eight.” Judging by the villages they visited, the financial strain on villagers’ livelihoods was actually less severe than anticipated.
This observation also aligns with the site-selection criteria used by Community Action.
Xiaoping explained that when identifying project locations, they tend to favour villages where the majority of land remains under local control. “Under these conditions, agricultural diversity thrives, enabling households to largely meet their own seasonal food requirements. Another crucial factor is that in such villages, household incomes are not wholly dependent on what can be drawn from the soil.”
Such villages frequently grapple with severe demographic ageing and rural depopulation. Those who remain often place a high premium on their emotional ties to the community, yet lack grassroots self-organisation in their day-to-day lives. In light of this reality, Community Action does not rush to introduce ecological farming techniques upon arriving in a new village. Instead, they prioritise organising community activities and dialogue, working alongside residents to identify climate adaptation strategies that genuinely suit local conditions.
Through these gatherings and exchanges, villagers began to develop a tangible sense of climate change and the language to articulate it. For example, during one community meeting, a villager noted that last year’s unusual temperatures had thrown off the flavour of the fermented beancurd produced that season.
At their Songping She project site in Panzhihua, frequent conversations with locals helped them identify a practical foothold for addressing climate change: the preservation of heritage crop varieties.
“When we first visited the village and asked residents whether they kept any traditional varieties at home, everyone said they didn’t,” Hu Xiaoping recalls. However, further engagement with the community quickly proved this initial answer wrong.
Yet, when they sat down in villagers’ homes sharing sunflower seeds, peanuts and home-cooked meals, and asked where the seeds for those ingredients came from, the answer quickly shifted: “These are our local peanuts. They’re smaller, but absolutely delicious. And this vegetable is a local heirloom variety—we plant it once and harvest for years.” Building on the heritage varieties gathered through this outreach, Homeland Action launched a community garden initiative, encouraging thirty households to transition their small personal plots to ecological growing methods.
Beyond this, they supported a local ecological arts group in tackling agricultural hazardous waste in the area. Yuan Yong later featured this example in a presentation delivered at a neighbouring village: “When ordinary residents take it upon themselves to tackle these environmental issues, other villagers who haven’t taken part will recognise that ‘these are our own people, not outsiders,’ and will naturally stop littering.”
III. Ensuring a Better Life for Those Who Remain
“Whether we talk about ‘conservation agriculture’ or ‘climate-friendly rice cultivation’, these are frameworks and techniques brought in from the outside. Our aim isn’t for villagers to simply adopt a prescriptive set of practices from us. Rather, we want them to learn how to observe and diagnose the challenges they face, draw on insights from their own local traditions, and develop their own understanding, skillset, and approach to action,” explained Hu Xiaoping.
Transformation rarely happens overnight. It begins with a few individuals making a shift, which gradually ripples out to influence others. In both Zhaizi and Ganjia Dian villages, I came across veteran farmers willing to give it a try. They may not be given to long speeches, but when the conversation turns to their farming experiences, they become remarkably eloquent.
These farmers are precisely the kind of local leads Hu Xiaoping refers to. Developing such grassroots champions is a primary objective for the Homestead Initiative at this stage. “The issues we explore tend to resonate closely with the practical needs of these key figures. Take soil degradation, for instance: Uncle Zhong in Zhaizi Village had already noticed it himself. So when we bring it up, he doesn’t dismiss it as nonsense.”
In Ganjia Dian Village, Yang Xiyu serves as one of these core collaborators.
The number of villagers keen to try this approach has grown to four households this year. While Yuan Yong was conducting a soil test in Yang Xiyu’s rice paddy, Sister Tang—who also practices ecological farming—hurried over. Between the naturally compacted soil and the severe spring drought, she repeatedly noted to Yuan Yong that transplanting seedlings without tilling was proving difficult and hard on the hands.
Yang Xiyu listened quietly, then murmured to the side: “Transplanting is a bit tricky this year, but they just don’t understand the method yet. We normally keep a layer of grass on the surface. You simply part the grass, press your thumb into the soil to create a small pocket, and the seedling will take root on its own. It’s not quite the same as transplanting into flooded paddies.” Later, back at home, he chatted about the homemade fertiliser and pest-repellent recipes he’d picked up online over the past couple of years. “The soil fertiliser is a mix of brown sugar, white vinegar, and beer,” he explained. “You can also soak chillies in white vinegar for half a month. It’s incredibly effective against stem borers.”
This year, Yang Xiyu has expanded this no-till mulching approach across more of his own land. In addition to leaving grass cover in his maize field, he has also started trialling upland rice cultivation on a small plot, using an heirloom Mojiang purple rice variety supplied by the Homestead Initiative. Come autumn, he plans to harvest the rice and immediately plant potatoes in the same field. He has also adopted Yuan Yong’s suggestion for this crop: rather than clearing the ground, he will simply part the straw and grass mulch, drop the seeds into small pockets, and cover them back up. “It’s straightforward enough,” he says. “When harvest time comes, you just pull the mulch aside.”
Not long ago, the Homestead Initiative organised a night observation and biodiversity survey in Zhaizi Village, roughly 50 kilometres away. The ecological fields were teeming with a noticeable increase in frogs, insects, and birds. Following the event, birdwatching quickly became a favourite pastime for the village women.
“When addressing rural hollowing-out, we haven’t tried to lure young people back by creating specific jobs. Instead, we’re looking at it from a different angle: how can those who remain build a better quality of life here?” says Hu Xiaoping.
Unless otherwise stated, all images are courtesy of the Homestead Initiative.
Editor: Ling Yu