Society

Tibetan farmers find business opportunities online

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2011-04-22 19:16

BAYI TOWN, Tibet - A small cybercafe at the foot of the Himalayas is full of Tibetan farmers browsing market information for farm produce or watching online videos.

Nourished by the mild climate in the middle reaches of the Yarlung Tsangpo River, the village of Lushal produces quality corn, bracken and various herbal plants necessary for traditional Chinese and Tibetan medicine recipes.

For decades, though, local farmers had difficulty selling their products, as the village in landlocked Mainling County in the Nyingchi prefecture of Southwest China's Tibet autonomous region had little access to vehicles or any means of communicating with the outside world.

"We lacked market information, so sales was a headache," said Serge, a village official who, like many Tibetans, goes by just one name.

Through 2008's "building new countryside" campaign, the village committee received five computers from the county government. But, because no one knew how to operate them, they were put aside for over a year until a group of officers from the Nyingchi border police station offered a hand.

"In 2009, we spent several days with the villagers showing them how to operate the computers and search for the information they need," said Xu Hongjun, head of the Lushal village border police station.

The officers also helped farmers download the most important information and print out hard copies to post on the village committee's bulletin board.

A college-educated Tibetan officer helped translate the information, which was mostly only available in Mandarin Chinese, into Tibetan for the villagers.

"Since then, the Internet has changed our lives," said Serge, who regularly visits the Tibet agricultural information portal at xznm.agri.gov.cn and agronet.com.cn, a national portal for farm produce trading.

With information obtained online, villager Soinam earned more than 100,000 yuan ($15,350) last year by selling 22 tonnes of corn to regional capital of Lhasa and Chengdu, the capital city of neighboring Sichuan Province.

"We had a bumper harvest every year, but didn't know where to sell the corn," said Soinam, whose family of 11 rely solely on farming. "I'll sell corn online again this fall."

Nyima Tsering, who ran a vegetable processing plant in neighboring Damnyain Village, also made big money last year by selling preserved bracken to the Republic of Korea.

Many villagers shared his fortune, as his plant bought more than 200 tonnes, worth 500,000 yuan, of the vegetable from local farmers.

Today, most of the 256 villages frequently visit the 30-square meter cybercafe. They continue to post and download supply and demand information, contact potential buyers and readjust their farm production plans to line up with market demand.

Tibet's regional government said the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau went digital thanks to a boom in information technology.

By the end of last year, Tibet had more than 1.2 million Internet users. The 3G network covered 73 counties in all six prefectures and the regional capital of Lhasa.

The regional government plans to spend at least 10 billion yuan on telecommunication in the next five years. By 2015, most remote villages and towns will also be covered by 2G or 3G networks.