Tobacco’s Role in Poverty

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Alleviation: Shiyan City Case Study

By Tobacco China Online

As one of the pillar industries of China’s fiscal revenue, the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration (hereinafter referred to as STMA, which runs China National Tobacco Corporation as the national regulatory body of the tobacco industry) has devoted itself to poverty alleviation.

This article will use the poverty alleviation efforts in Shiyan city, Hubei province as a case study to present how STMA facilitates the construction of tobacco field infrastructure and water conservancy facilities in poverty-stricken areas of the city, developing new ways to utilize the facilities as well as providing poverty-alleviation skill training and diversifying income-increasing industries, aiming to continuously improve the ability of poor tobacco farmers to increase their incomes.

STMA has, since 1992, committed to poverty alleviation and development in Shiyan, a regional city with concentrated poverty-stricken areas. The agency has invested an equivalent of more than RMB700 million to poverty alleviation in this city focusing on infrastructure construction, industrial development, science, and technology education, medical and health, and ecological improvement.

STMA’s achievements in poverty alleviation over the past 27 years

Located in the northwestern part of Hubei province, Shiyan has been a focus for ecological protection and poverty alleviation. In order to improve the terrible production and living conditions in targeted areas, STMA has since 1992 stepped up its efforts to help locals break out of the development dilemma, centering around what people care about, such as drinking water, cooking, traveling, housing, hospitalization, teaching, farming, responding to disasters, etc. Since 2018, STMA has set the key tasks of poverty alleviation to the aspects of industry, consumption, party building, official training and selection, etc., to implement precise poverty alleviation measures.

STMA has been sending outstanding young officials within the agency to go to the city to boost poverty alleviation work since 1997. Till now, 39 STMA officials have been or are working in Shiyan. From 2002 to 2012, STMA targeted Yunxi and Zhuxi, two counties of Shiyan with the worst natural conditions and the worst economy.

Over the past 27 years, STMA’s efforts in  poverty alleviation has solved the problem of drinking water source for more than 160,000 people in the Shiyan mountain areas, the problem of farmland irrigation for 220,000 mu (1mu=666.67km2), the difficulty in means of travelling for 380,000 people, difficulty in getting medical care for 450,000 people, and difficulty in attending school for 40,000 students, and helped tens of thousands of farmers to overcome poverty and become better off through the promotion of tobacco leaves and related industries.

Carrying out industrial poverty alleviation by tobacco

STMA has adopted tobacco leaf cultivation as the fundamental solution to maximize farmers’ continuous income increase and reduce poverty through transferring the “transfusion” life-relief-type poverty alleviation to “hematopoietic” development-type.

Giving play to the advantages of tobacco and investing capital.

Since 2013, STMA has increased poverty alleviation funds in Zhuxi and Zhushan from RMB5-10 million per county per year to RMB15 million in 2015, RMB20 million in 2017, and RMB25 million in 2018.

Backing the tobacco industry and utilizing its advantages

Shiyan has six national key poverty-stricken counties, five of which grow the crop. Compared with other regions, tobacco cultivation serves as the foundation for farmers in Shiyan’s mountain areas to get rid of poverty. In August 2018, STMA organized a meeting for tobacco leaf production and marketing in Zhushan and Zhuxi, aiming to ensure the sustainable development of the industry through further improving the production level and quality of tobacco leaves, and enhancing industrial availability.

On the other hand, the agency carried out vocational training in tobacco-growing areas and towns and awarded the top ten tobacco-growing villages, moves which greatly enhanced farmers’ enthusiasm. In 2018, STMA commissioned the Shiyan branch to organize the training for more than 1,000 tobacco leaf production technicians and tobacco farmers in Zhushan and Zhuxi.

Broadening channels and increasing income

While focusing on the development of the tobacco leaf industry, STMA supported farmers with the willingness and capability to diversify into additional crops such as tea, walnuts, Chinese bees, and Yunyang chickens. The combination of poverty-stricken farmers’ income-increasing projects with the development of local and advantageous industries has formed a new development pattern, which has better solved the limitability of farmers dealing with issues independently in the mountainous areas and effectively broadened income-generating channels for local farmers.

In September 2018, STMA held a special meeting for the production and marketing of agricultural special products in designated poverty alleviation areas in Shiyan, promoting the sales of agricultural products in Zhushan, Zhuxi, and even the whole Shiyan area. Another goal was to get the agricultural products into the tobacco sales terminal, into the internal canteen, and into the family of workers, further expanding the sales channels of agricultural products in mountainous areas.

At present, Shiyan comprehensively utilizes 96 seedling greenhouses, 262 dense curing barns, 430,000 bags of shiitake mushrooms in 26 greenhouses, and 24,661.4 sq.km of gastrodia elata, including four greenhouses at 4,195 sq.km, 74 households at 16,915 sq.km, and 169 curing barns at 3,551.4 sq.km.

Improving rural production and living conditions

STMA insists on the combination of “blood transfusion” and “hematopoiesis”. A series of effective measures have been taken to help villages out of poverty. In order to solve the difficulties in traveling, drinking water, and housing, STMA has doubled its efforts to gradually enhance the development capacity of villages under extremely poor conditions and improve the production and living conditions of farmers. Meanwhile, it has increased investment in public utilities such as education, culture, and health to implement education and public welfare actions and improve the level of public services.

In 2007, STMA launched pilot projects on modern tobacco agriculture construction in Shiyan, enabling a new level of development of tobacco leaves in the designated counties. It helped the establishment of cooperatives in these counties and set up specialized service teams to carry out seedlings, machine farming, plant protection, curing. and other specialized services. STMA also vigorously promoted comprehensive construction of irrigation and roads in tobacco fields, seedling workshops, tobacco machinery, etc. The agency invested funds to help build pools, ditches, pipe networks, and machine-farming roads in tobacco-producing areas, to build local water source projects, and reservoir projects to solve the issues of drinking water and farmland irrigation. Since 1997 the agency has made traveling easier by building, repairing, and reinforcing roads and building new bridges. All the above actions taken by STMA have greatly improved the basic living conditions of the local area and the people’s livelihood as well.

Increased investment in science, education, and poverty alleviation.

In Yunxi county, STMA contributed to the construction of seven Hope Primary Schools as well as libraries, and computer rooms for 20 junior high schools. In Yunyang district, the agency facilitated five Hope Primary Schools, enabling 3,000 eligible children to study in spacious and bright classrooms. Since 2006 it has helped build the new campus of Zhuxi’s No.1 High School into a first-class modern high school and facilitated Zhuxi No. 2 High School to build a “Golden Leaf Restaurant” for teachers and students. Moreover, a series of public welfare projects such as “STMA Fellowship”, “Golden Leaf Library”, and “Golden Leaf New Great Wall Advanced Class” have been implemented, benefiting nearly 20,000 students in more than 20 primary and secondary schools. In 2018, in order to solve the shortage of faculty in township schools, STMA funded the construction of classrooms with 70 sets of terminal equipment, as well as four live broadcast rooms and smart control center server line.

Increased investment in health care

STMA committed to the expansion and reconstruction projects of township hospitals, donating five ambulances to Zhushan Township Health Center, donating ambulances and medical equipment to Fangxian county through the “Mother Health Express” charity project, and provided assistance to nearly 20 village-level clinics in Zhushan county.

With STMA’s assistance, the medical conditions for people living in poverty-stricken mountain areas have been significantly improved, especially with the provision of sanitary equipment for township and village-level health centers.

These moves have rapidly improved the current situation of hospitals in terms of equipment shortages, strengthened diagnostic capabilities, and facilitated the way patients travel to and from superior hospitals and made it easier for the farmers to see doctors.

The year of 2019 is a significant year to overcome poverty. At present, there are 260,000 poor people in Zhushan and Zhuxi counties. STMA will continue to give full play to the advantages of tobacco system and formulate targeted industrial poverty alleviation measures and public welfare projects to ensure the people in the two counties to get out of poverty as scheduled.