Editor’s note: In this issue, “Chinese Story” will continue to focus on supply side reforms in China. We will explain how Sanping Village in Hubei Province has adjusted small and scattered agricultural patches so that the farmland of every household becomes continuous, thus helping the villagers earn more money.

Xiao Jiaxin is a farmer living in Sanping Village. He is 64 years old, but he does not look like his age at all. Since farm work usually happens in the open air, you may wonder why he looks so young. The answer is that farming for him is no longer hard work.

Sanping Village is located in the transition zone between the Jianghan Plain and Jingshan Mountain. The terrain is complex and irrigation conditions are poor. In the past, when there was a major drought, the villagers had to pump water and sometimes they even fought one another for water.

In the 1980s, the village implemented a first round of land contracting. For the sake of fairness, the village divided its land into small patches, according to soil fertility and the distance from a villager’s home. Then these patches were distributed among all households. Xiao Jiaxin’s family received 6,333 square meters of farmland. It included 26 small and scattered patches, the smallest of which covered only 28 square metres.

When it was time to transplant rice seedlings, Xiao Jiaxin would haul five rolls of plastic pipes and three rolls of electric wire on a handcart to the pump water. It took Xiao Jiaxin’s family one and a half months to transplant rice seedlings for their farmland. The entire family spent almost all of their time working in the fields.

In 1997, the village began a second round of land contracting with a term of 30 years. This time, many villagers suggested that the small patches from round one should be adjusted so that every household could have a farmland that was connected. “My family used to have 26 patches of land that were not attached. Now our farmland is continuous. In the past, since the farmland was scattered and there were no paths for tractors, farm equipment could not be used. Now, farming has become easier. Irrigation is easier and we can produce a good harvest even if there is a drought. Because of this, I bought three rice transplanting machines and three tractors. It now takes one person fewer than 20 days to plough all the farmland with these machines,” Xiao Jiaxin said.

“In addition to working on our own farmland, I also use my equipment to do work for other households. This brings in tens of thousands of yuan every year. With continuous farmland, many people are now engaged in lobster farming. Last year, my family planted rice as well as lobster farming, and earned more than 40,000 yuan. Now people of my age are often seen doing farm work easily,” Xiao Jiaxin continued.

Today, with increases in earnings, 150 of the 230 households in Sanping Village have purchased apartments in the county seat. In 2016, 869,600 mu (over 90 percent) of the county’s farmland was adjusted so that households could have continuous land. The transfer price of continuous land is over 700 yuan and sometimes even exceeds 1,000 yuan, while the price of scattered and unconnected plots of land is just 400 to 600 yuan.