Role model in showing technology is the key to poverty alleviation

ZHU YOUYONG, AN OUTSTANDING PLANT PATHOLOGIST, was given the title of "role model of the times", in recognition of his contributions both to science and poverty alleviation. China Daily writer Wang Yiqing comments:

An academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and honorary president of Yunnan Agricultural University in Southwest China, Zhu started his research on crops' genetic diversity as a solution to their vulnerability to diseases in 1986. His ecological solutions to crop diseases have been widely applied both at home and abroad, and have won him many prestigious awards, including an award from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and a national science and technology progress award.

He has been called a "farmer academician" by the media, because he has committed himself to poverty alleviation work and helping farmers in poverty stricken regions lift themselves out of poverty through scientific farming technologies and methods.

Zhu firmly believes technology is the key to poverty alleviation work. He began his poverty alleviation work in 2015 at the age of 60 in a poverty-stricken village in Yunnan province. In the following years he and his team have taught the local impoverished villagers agricultural technologies to help them improve their livelihoods through farming. As a deputy to the National People's Congress, he promoted local potatoes to the media during the annual session of 2018. And he refused a 1 billion yuan ($142.06 million) offer advanced by an enterprise to transfer his agricultural technology of planting Chinese ginseng, much prized for its medicinal properties, but provided this technology to villagers in poverty stricken regions for free.

Zhu's laudable poverty alleviation work demonstrates his noble character as a scientist, but also shows the significance of technology in poverty alleviation work. Technology can play a key role in poverty alleviation work, because it is the tool that helps impoverished rural residents get rid of poverty independently instead of only receiving hand-outs.

As one of the big disadvantages in impoverished regions is the lack of advanced technology to improve their agricultural industry and livelihoods, it is crucial that those with scientific knowledge and technological skills provide support to them as Zhu has done.