culture

The number of university and college graduates is increasing among agricultural workers thanks to the study-while-you-work educational system.

“One in four farmers of our farm are university and college graduates,” said Yun Chun Hwa, manageress of the Chongsan Farm of Kangso District, Nampho. “They make steady efforts to improve their ability as required by the developing reality and it inspires all others to scientific farming.”

According to her, farm officials, leaders and technical assistants of workteams and sub-workteam leaders are all university and college graduates and there are many other technicians including agricultural and farm machine engineers in workteams and sub-workteams.

They play a pivotal role in ensuring that all kinds of farm work, including improving soil fertility, sowing, transplanting, manuring and cultivating crops, are done to meet the scientific and technical requirements.

For example, a workteam technical assistant, who is well-known for his high sense of responsibility for manuring and cultivating crops, fixed a rational mixing ratio of herbicide to sand to suit the characters of sand loamy soil and used them to increase the weeding effect to the maximum, thereby reducing the amount of agricultural chemicals to be used without mobilizing farmers for weeding paddy fields.

The technical assistant of the mechanized workteam made dozens of farm machines of different kinds including manual wheat and barley sower to increase the proportion of mechanized farming. And another technical officer analyzed various raw materials for the production of substitute agrochemicals in a responsible manner to lower the production cost while enhancing the effect of exterminating harmful insects.

Dozens of farmers of the Changso workteam of the Sinhung Fruit Farm under the South Hamgyong Provincial Rural Economy Committee are also students or graduates of universities and colleges.

“It is easier said than done to study at colleges while growing fruit trees. But our workteam members study and work hard to bring in a rich fruit harvest with scientific farming,” said Jong Kum Chol, leader of the workteam.

Among them are an old sub-workteam leader, a married woman and a young man who has just begun to work at the workteam.

Though they are different in age and life history, the workteam members joined efforts while working and studying to overfulfil its fruit production plan last year.

University and college graduates of farmers continue to grow in number across the country.