Tsinghua students help preserve terrace culture with designs

A series of innovative solutions designed by Tsinghua University students, including products and service systems, will help empower the traditional agricultural sector and enhance rural livelihoods in Honghe county, Yunnan province, according to an innovation incubation project.

The solutions were released by the China Foundation for Poverty Alleviation on Friday at a promotional event for the Ag-LabCx Innovation Incubation Project, which was co-hosted by the representative office in China of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the School of Fine Arts of Tsinghua University. The event also saw the official launch of the Honghe Innovation Plan, which will turn the solutions into reality.

The incubation project, conducted earlier this year, was an eight-week thematic course on service design, which focused on the Hani Rice Terraces in Honghe.

The course required students to conduct field research in the Hani Rice Terraces, and design localized products and service systems with innovative ideas and methods.

About 20 Tsinghua students proposed five innovative solutions based on local conditions: the Hani Rice Terraces Adoption Program, Cultural Ecology Museum, Cultural Eco-tourism, Red Rice Development, and Cultural Protection and Promotion.

One of the groups designed a WeChat program to encourage users to donate and adopt a portion of a Hani rice field. The users will be able to check on the growth of the rice through the program in the following year. When harvest season arrives, the donors will receive a bag of rice from the land they adopted.

In addition, users can also learn about the customs and culture of the local Hani people, one of the ethnic minorities.

Luo Chongkai, deputy head of the Honghe county government, said the proposed solutions closely matched the local resources and the characteristics of the Hani Rice Terraces. "It is based on the functions of the internet, e-commerce and new media, setting a benchmark for connecting our local farmers with the market."

The FAO designated the Hani Rice Terraces as Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems in 2010. Honghe county, where the terraces are located, is a national-level poverty-stricken county.

Nicholas Rosellini, the UN resident coordinator, spoke highly of the necessity of the project and said in his opening remarks that innovation in the food and agriculture sectors is "critical for improving agricultural productivity and output, farmers' income, as well as food and nutrition security".

Vincent Martin, the FAO representative in China and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, said agricultural innovation is the central driving force to realize a world free of hunger and malnutrition.

"Therefore, the FAO China Office has set up an Innovation Lab that currently focuses on two fields: connecting family farmers to the market with ICT (information and communication technology), and reducing food loss and waste," he said, adding that the Innovation Lab aims at building a platform for different parties to jointly promote agricultural innovation through service design courses, design thinking and activities.