【中级听力】（文末附视频）Cooperatives Help Rural Women Increase Incomes

Cooperatives in China Help Rural Women Increase Their Incomes

《文 末 附 视 频》

This may not be a word-for-word transcript.

Narrator: Across China, April is tea-harvesting time. Women from the Fuxing Tea Farmers’ Cooperative are busy plucking spring tea leaves. This is the first farmers’ cooperative founded with support from a rural development project by the World Bank in Guizhou, one of China’s poorest provinces. Growing tea provides jobs and a source of income for rural women who stay behind to take care of their families while their husbands migrate to work in cities. The women are paid a piece rate(计件工资) for plucking tea.

Xu Guangrong: I work about seven to ten hours a day and can pluck about nine kilograms of white tea.”

Narrator: During the tea harvesting season, Xu earns 5,000 to 6,000 yuan a month, which helps pay for her two children’s living expenses in school. A grant from the project helped the co-op expand its tea-processing factory, buy new machinery, and open a tea shop downtown, developing a whole value chain.

A new road, field footpaths and irrigation works improved production conditions. Systems were established for membership assembly, board of directors, board of supervisors, financial management, and profit distribution.

Farmers joined the co-op by converting their land use rights into shares. They are paid a salary for working in the tea plantation, as well as a dividend in proportion to the shares they own.

Zhang Jiqiang: We paid a dividend of 405 yuan per mu of land last year. Our next step is to improving sales. More sales will bring more income and higher dividend for our members.

Narrator: The Changlong Farmers’ Cooperative grows Gastrodia elata, or Tian Ma in Chinese, a traditional medical herb that treats convulsion, hypertension, dizziness and headaches.

Fan Ling is one of the 40 workers in the co-op’s factory, which was expanded and upgraded with project funding. Each month, she earns 2,600 yuan.

Fan Ling: My two kids are both in high school. I used to work far away from home, and it was difficult to take care of my parents when they were sick. Now I work close to home. We can grow Tian Ma and work in the factory.

Narrator: The co-op made its first dividend payment in 2018.

Zhang Yangfu: We pay dividends in several ways – on the basis of the number of shares a member owns, the amount of Tian Ma and mushroom sold to the co-op, the profit earned from the processed products, and salaries for working in the factory.

Narrator: Last year, Hu Maofen harvested and sold 100 kilograms of Tian Ma. This, together with her dividend and salary from the factory, amounted to more than 20,000 yuan.

Hu Maofen: Joining the co-op has increased our income. We don’t need to depend on my children and can live on our own. Our life is getting better and better.

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