Hechi's only deep poverty-stricken town paves way for prosperity

Bamu township, the only deep poverty-stricken town in Hechi and one of the 30 towns stricken by deep poverty in Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, has been making efforts to lift itself out of poverty and pave the way for prosperity in recent years.

Before 2016, the town had leading industries of walnuts, plum, oranges, pomelos, and grapes, but the overall industrial scale was not large enough to drive income increases. People relied on the traditional low-value corn, rice, and poultry industries as their main income source. As a result, the incidence of poverty then was 30.95 percent.

In recent years, the town has substituted subsidies with rewards to expand the traditional farming industry. The demonstration bases in the town also helped increase the coverage of the poverty alleviation industries to more than 90 percent.

To date, the plantation area of walnuts in the town reached 12,000 mu (800 hectares), while that of pomelos and traditional Chinese medicine were 800 mu and 300 mu respectively. The cultivation area of tea-oil trees was 8,400 mu.

The aerial view of the ecological and leisure agricultural demonstration garden in Bamu township of Tian'e county, Hechi. [Photo by Yang Tongbiao/xuexi.cn]

In addition, Bamu township promoted the development of its village-level collective economy by cooperating with leading enterprises.

In 2019, the collective economic income of the 14 administrative village of Bamu all exceeded 40,000 yuan ($5,641.28). Among them, the two poverty-stricken villages of Banme and Gongchang had their collective economic income surpass 100,000 yuan.

Gongchang village is one of the 100 villages stricken by deep poverty in Guangxi. It used to have a poverty incidence of 55.93 percent.

In recent years, the village has been developing its poultry, dry lotus roots, ginger, edible mushrooms, traditional Chinese medicine, tea-oil trees, plums, and walnuts industries under the guidance of the township government.

The model integrating leading enterprises, demonstration bases, and farmers has helped local residents find employment and increase their family incomes. The village's poverty incidence dropped to 0.85 percent in 2018.

The town's poverty alleviation efforts through industries bore great fruit. From 2016 to 2019, there were four villages in the town that were lifted out of poverty. Its poverty incidence decreased to 0.73 percent in 2019. The per capita net income of farmers in the town reached 6,223.80 yuan, up 10 percent year-on-year.