As China celebrates the Chinese New Year of the Snake, the Bafata region in central Guinea Bissau, a West African country, is experiencing a dry season. The Reba River meanders and flows, with green trees lining its banks. The quiet river water nourishes vast land during the dry season, creating over 25000 hectares of irrigated low-lying fields, known as the “granary of Guinea Bissau”.
When the reporter arrived at a local farm, he saw villagers sowing seeds under the guidance of Chinese experts. Some of them bent down to sow the germinated rice seeds, while others carefully sorted out the seedlings. Not far away, tractors are busy shuttling between farmland. This busy farming scene makes people feel as if they are in China.
Rice cultivation in Guinea Bissau is divided into two seasons: dry and rainy, with the planting period during the dry season coinciding with the Chinese Lunar New Year. In order to avoid missing the farming season, the experts of the Chinese agricultural technology expert group assisting Guinea Bissau have their own unique “Spring Festival schedule”.
The experts of the 12th batch of China’s aid to Guinea Bissau agricultural technology expert group are all from Hubei Province. According to their hometown customs, they clean their residence, hang red lanterns and colorful flags, and paste couplets early on New Year’s Eve to warmly welcome local villagers who come to pay their respects. At noon, everyone sat together for a reunion dinner, video connecting with family and friends who were far away in China, exchanging New Year’s greetings. For them, this rare day of rest is particularly precious.
In the early morning of the first month, after eating the hot Noodles in soup, experts drove to Kalantaba Farm in Gabu District to check the progress of land leveling before rice planting. The only way to the farm is a bumpy dirt road, muddy during the rainy season and dusty during the dry season, which they have become accustomed to.
Tan Bing, a senior agronomist from China’s aid to Guinea Bissau agricultural technology expert group, told reporters that Kalantaba Farm is an advanced rice cultivation technology demonstration area of the expert group. The selected high-quality rice varieties will be transplanted here for expansion experiments, and the seeds obtained will be promoted by the Guinea Bissau agricultural department throughout the country.
On the second day of the first lunar month, experts were invited to Manbanco Village in Oyo District to deliver rice seeds harvested from the previous season to the villagers. People sang and danced, warmly welcoming the arrival of Chinese agricultural experts. It is the perseverance of batches of Chinese agricultural experts that has enabled our remote village to grow high-quality rice. Thank you
Since 1998, the Chinese Agricultural Technology Expert Group has been rooted in the Bafata region to carry out rice breeding and high-yield cultivation demonstrations, organize training on rice planting techniques and agricultural machinery maintenance techniques.
Kongtu Bo’er Farm is a base for the Chinese assisted agricultural technology expert group to conduct comparative experiments on rice varieties. Zheng Junjie, the head of the agricultural technology expert group for China’s aid to Guinea Bissau, told reporters that Chinese agricultural experts worked overtime to sow 17 high-quality rice varieties imported from China before New Year’s Eve. Subsequently, 3 to 5 drought resistant and insect resistant varieties that are most suitable for the local environment will be selected through comparative experiments for field transplantation.
The hard work of agricultural experts has attracted agricultural technicians and large-scale growers from surrounding farms to come and observe and learn. They carefully looked at the code plates corresponding to each type of rice variety, with admiration and anticipation in their eyes. Rice seedling cultivation is indeed a technical task, which requires controlling temperature and humidity, as well as preventing and controlling diseases and pests. Only with such careful care can high-quality seedlings be cultivated, “said Lassana Kanbai, the director of Kongtuboel Farm
Sana Kamala, the director of Kalantaba Farm, wrote in a thank-you letter to the Chinese agricultural technology expert group that “eradicating poverty and hunger and achieving food self-sufficiency is a noble right to development. We thank the Chinese experts for their selfless help