Today, Her Royal Highness Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn presented FAO awards to four Asian farmers from Afghanistan, China, Viet Nam and Thailand.

Rong Wenxi from China was honoured as a model farmer for rural biogas development.

Despite the rapidly increasing energy consumption of China, if one travels to the countryside one will find rural areas where power is still in short supply. But if one travels to the right areas, one will also find people who are doing something about it.

One of those people is Rong Wenxi of Hengshan Yao village in Guangxi province. Like many of the small-scale farmers in his village, Rong Wenxi used to cut trees in the forests for wood to burn for cooking and other power needs. But by the early 1980s, the forests were disappearing and people could not find enough wood. Some small mudslides had already occurred because of the environmental damage.

Rong Wenxi is not the kind of person to sit and watch as problems develop. As the headman of Hengshan Yao, he is a leader, and a leader has to take action.

He traveled to a nearby village where another farmer had built a biogas generator. It used excrement from farm animals to generate electricity. Rong Wenxi studied the model, returned to his village and built his own biogas generator, using the waste from his pig, cow and buffalo. He was soon generating enough biogas for cooking and lighting his home, although he still needed the government’s power grid to operate his appliances. And the residue from the generators is also used as fertilizer for crops, so he can farm organically without expensive chemicals.

His neighbors soon noticed his success. As a leader, Rong Wenxi wanted to uplift his community, so he taught others how to build biogas generators with the skills he learned in training by a local energy bureau.

Recently, he and his neighbors invested some of their own profits from farming, and with some funding and technical assistance from the government, built a biogas generator that is supplying power to 25 households. Eighty percent of his community’s power is now generated by biogas. “Before biogas our village was poor. Now we are doing well, and our project is a model for other villages,’’ he says.

He adds that he wants to be a model, not just for his son and daughter and his village, but for all of China. He firmly believes that widespread use of biogas can be an important part of meeting China’s energy needs. “If we use knowledge and technology, and care for the environment, then all of China will have a better future,’’ he says.

Today, Rong Wenxi’s farm has grown and is earning higher profits than ever before, thanks in part to power and fertilizer from biogas. The forest cover surrounding his community has been repaired and largely restored. The villagers now work together to protect their environment for today ad the future.

Energy and the environment are two of the most pressing issues facing the world today. And the world could learn a lesson or two about how to deal with these issues from Rong Wenxi and his community in China.


More information at:
http://www.fao.org/getinvolved/worldfoodday/en/