THE GREAT REVERSAL The Privatization of China, 1978-1989 ...

1978197919801981198219831984198546718896103112118118+bushels"""""""This progress really began with mechanization, especially with the corn picker, which has astalk chopper built in. Since the pickers chop up the stalks as they pick the ears, all organicresidue goes back into the soil, enriching the fields from year to year. This gives the soilmuch greater water-holding capacity and makes the chemical fertilizer more available toplants. When you add to this the top-quality seed, the increased amounts of fertilizer, theaddition of phosphate fertilizer to the usual nitrogen used, some use of herbicides for weedcontrol and perhaps the detasseling, you get an unbeatable formula for raising productionyear after year. Since the machines liberated labor power this village, which could previouslyhardly handle the grain land, branched out into sidelines -- processing, transport, livestock(particularly chicken raising), silk worms, silk filiatures, and construction crews -- to push upincome by 333 percent. Agriculture and sidelines combined now provide 418 yuan per capitaper year as against 66 yuan in 1978.Wanggongzhuang's success has inspired the whole township and the whole county, forthat matter, and many other brigades have decided to follow its example. This method has thesupport of county leaders now, but no one can publicize the experience nationally or even atthe province level because it is not in accord with policy.The contrast between the remarkable results in Wanggongzhuang and the farming in otherplaces is sharp. We saw peasants burning enormous quantities of stalks in the fields to makeroom for the planting of wheat. They burn the corn stalks and bean stalks wholesale inSoutheast Shanxi in the fall, and after the summer harvest the wheat stalks or straw as well.All of this useful organic matter is burned because it is in the way and villages don't haveenough labor power topage 102process it by hand. Of course, traditionally they used to burn all these stalks as fuel forcooking and heating, but with the development of coal mining in recent decades and withcoal so cheap everywhere in Shanxi, people burn coal as fuel and the stalks are no longerneeded for domestic survival.We saw places where the peasants had piled stalks along the highway embankments at theends of the fields, then set them afire and burned them in such a way that the heat killed theshade trees that lined the highway. In late October universal burning filled the Shanxi air withsmoke; one could smell it on the wind everywhere and see it on the horizon, an ubiquitousblue haze. A terrible, terrible waste!