"We are creating New Zealand-style grasslands here," said Zhang Daquan, director of the Qinglong County Grasslands Center in Guizhou Province. "Both farmers and environment are benefiting from it."

Zhang Daquan, director of the Qinglong County Grasslands Center in Guizhou Province. [China.org.cn by Zhang Rui]

The farmers have now become goatherds, Zhang told China.org.cn on Friday. His initiative, which he created ten years ago, has evolved into the so-called "Qinglong Model" as they are preparing to take it outside province border.

Wu Bangguo, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and chairman of the 11th NPC Standing Committee, inspected the rural area once in May 2008 and believed the model was “a good way for Guizhou farmers to get rich while at the same time protecting the environment."

Zhang took reporters on a media tour around the hillside grasslands to show them what exactly Guizhou provincial and local governments have efficiently done to ease poverty in an ecological way.

"The hill soil is quite thin and once upon a time farmers were planting corn on it. Results got worse and worse," Zhang remembered. "When a drought hit the area, the corn plants died within 5 days; when heavy rainfall hit, the water would wash away the earth. Farmers thus got poorer and poorer."

The man recalled how in 1990 he had noticed some shepherds driving their sheep here from other places in order to eat the grass. They told him they made an easy 20,000 yuan a year by doing this. At that time, 20,000 yuan equaled about 100,000 yuan (US$15,701) today. After that he went to New Zealand's Massey University to learn about grassland stock farming.

In late 2000, he persuaded the local government to invest money in the project and import grass seeds and lambs from Australia and New Zealand. He initiated the program to get all farmers to start raising goats. The program then went to its next level in 2002.

"Everything fits together. The grass can grow on the thin soil and stays green 9 months a year, outlasting Inner Mongolia's 3 month-long green grass period for live stock. Moreover, it puts a halt to the water and soil loss. At the same time, the sheep and goats eat the grass,plus we raise and sell them in order to ease the area’s poverty."

As of today, Zhang said, the local government has put 102 million yuan (US$16 million) into the program and farmers have made revenues totaling around 400 million yuan (US$62.8 million).

But Zhang Daquan said there is still more work to be done in the future as they need to update the water supply system, equipment as well as their transport system. Roads need to be constructed in order to catch up with the rapid growth of the goat farming business. A big and advanced mutton source mill will start operating this July.

But all of the above is merely one part of the strategy to battle the hamadas in China’s poorest (and mountainous) province. "There are 189,000 acres of hamada in Qinglong County and we have only managed to turn 39,700 of those into artificial New Zealand grasslands," Zhang said.

Dealing with the Guizhou rock deserts has always been a headache. According to Lu Zhiming, vice governor of Guizhou Province, the Guizhou hamadas exist due to Karst landform and excessive soil exploitation. "During recent years, we have enhanced our efforts to plant trees, grow grass and protect animals. The province’s forest coverage rate has been raised to 40 percent (from 20 percent in the past)."

Lu Zhiming held a press conference in the provincial capital of Guiyang to brief the media about their battle against poverty over the last decade.

"From 2001 to 2011, we poured central and provincial poverty alleviation funds worth 1.6 billion yuan into 123,000 projects. The province's poor rural population has decreased from 8.6 million (2001 poverty standard: annual net income of 872 yuan per person) to 4.18 million (2010 standard: annual income of 1274 yuan per person)."

However, "65 poor counties in rock desert areas cover 80.3 percent of Guizhou's land acreage. 85.4 percent of poor people, 87.6 percent of poor towns and 84.3 percent of poor villages and 82.5 percent of poor ethnic towns in our province are situated there," he said.

"We still have 11.49 million people who are living beneath the new national poverty standard (annual net income of 2,300 yuan per person), which makes us a regrettable national No.1. So it is our priority to get rid of poverty and speed up development."

From 2001 to 2010, the Chinese central government assigned 10.5 billion yuan to finance Guizhou's poverty reduction. In 2011 it approved 2.295 billion yuan (US$360.3 million) for Guizhou, a 35.53 percent increase compared to last year, according to Zheng Wenkai, the vice director of the State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Reduction who also attended the press conference.

Lu also said they are trying to relocate people from the mountains, stone mountains and rock desert areas, where "water and soil are not enough to help people survive." The Guizhou provincial government plans to relocate 1.5 million people in 9 years. This year they will invest 1.8 billion yuan in the relocation of 101,300 people, many of whom are part of ethnic minorities and offer them new jobs, social insurance, and an allowance if they volunteer to move.