Green mountains fuel Hechi's villages poverty alleviation work

In recent years, people in Bamu township in Tian'e county in the city of Hechi have been devoted to turning their green mountains into a way of generating income to fuel their poverty alleviation efforts, producing promising results.

Bamu, located in the Dashi Mountain area, is the only deeply impoverished town in the city. Nine of its 14 administrative villages are impoverished, and the poverty incidence has hit 30.59 percent.

There were 1,022 registered impoverished households with 4,304 poverty-stricken people in the town at the beginning of the 13th Five-year Plan (2016-20).

Traditional and single industries, as well as poor infrastructure used to be the town's conditions. "In the past, only corn, lotus root, and sweet potatoes could be grown on the mountains," said Zhang Fei, Party secretary of the town.

Adhering to the saying of, "living from what the land and sea can give," the town started developing planting and breeding industries that are adaptable to the mountainous area a few years ago, including dry lotus root, walnuts, oranges, grapefruits, tea-oil trees, as well as beef cattle, goats, pigs, and chickens.

To date, the planting area of dry lotus roots at Bamu has exceeded 3,000 mu (200 hectares), as well as 21,000 mu in walnuts, 3,180 mu in oranges, 4,860 mu in grapefruits, and 4,170 mu in tea oil trees.

Three autonomous region-level modern characteristic comprehensive agricultural demonstration areas were also established in the town.

As a result, three poverty-stricken villages, Jiayan, Shuodong, and Banme, of the town have been lifted out of poverty, with 880 families and 3,723 people moving above the poverty line. The poverty incidence rate in the township has dropped to 4.18 percent.