Ruan Yunze is a professor and doctoral supervisor at Hainan University, a delegate to the 11th National Congress of the China Association for Science and Technology (CAST), and chief expert for the China Rural Special Technology Association’s Science and Technology Backyards (STBs) in Hainan. With her support, Hainan has established 209 STBs across 18 cities and counties, with participation from 12 universities.

In 2013, Ruan developed a field trial plan for a banana-growing company. Every aspect—from soil improvement and fertilizer formulations to disease prevention and control—was supported by the scientific literature. Yet the company raised an objection: “The fertilizer costs are too high. That’s an extra 0.05 yuan per plant.”

“Even 0.05 yuan makes a difference?” she asked.

“Saving 0.05 yuan per plant adds up to 50,000 yuan across a million plants—enough to pay a worker’s wages for an entire year,” came the reply.

Ruan had no answer. Her plan was technically sound, but she had never considered the costs from the farmers’ perspective.

That exchange changed her approach to research. Instead of asking, “My technology is so good—why won’t you use it?” she began designing research plans from the farmers’ perspective, taking market prices, labor costs, and working capital cycles into account from the outset.

Agricultural research, she came to realize, should go beyond producing research papers in the laboratory. It must focus on developing technologies that farmers can afford to use.

Drawing on years of practical experience, Ruan has developed three insights into  translating advances in agricultural research into benefits for farmers.

The first concerns a structural divide. The agricultural science and technology innovation system has become increasingly oriented toward publications, research projects, and research platforms. Agricultural production, meanwhile, remains organized at the local level, characterized by fragmented operations, reliance on accumulated farming experience, and practices shaped by local conditions. A wide gap separates the two, making the “last mile” of putting research into practice a persistent challenge. Under the current evaluation system, she observes, publishing ten papers in leading journals is valued far more highly than solving problems that have troubled businesses and farmers for years. As a result, many research findings remain on paper rather than being put into practice.

Her second insight is that STBs can bridge this gap and meet farmers’ practical needs. In 2009, a team led by Zhang Fusuo, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, established China’s first STB in Quzhou, Hebei Province. The model shifted the research focus from academic topics to practical problems in the field, bringing laboratory research directly into agricultural production. In 2011, Hainan’s first STB, dedicated to banana cultivation, was established, with Ruan playing a founding role in the development of STBs in the province.

The third concerns the realities facing Hainan’s agricultural sector. Agriculture in the province is undergoing rapid transformation, with substantial capital inflows and a high degree of market uncertainty. In Ruan’s view, these conditions make it all the more necessary to accelerate the development of STBs under government guidance, using small-scale trials of agricultural technologies before large-scale adoption to avoid costly misjudgments.

Together, these insights shape a key priority in her work as a delegate: bringing scattered STBs together into coordinated clusters.

Hainan’s soils contain only 1–2% organic matter, and soil acidification and problems associated with continuous cropping are widespread. The province has only 46 organic fertilizer producers currently in operation, and their combined annual production capacity is far from sufficient to close a supply gap of more than four million tonnes.

To address these challenges, Ruan proposed the “Green–Gold Cycle”, an integrated program linking the local collection and transport of agricultural waste, organic fertilizer production, and soil improvement with farmers’ needs and technical services to create a closed-loop system for recycling agricultural resources. The agricultural technology association played a key role in connecting those involved and coordinating their efforts.

Following Typhoon Yagi in 2024, her team helped coordinate the purchase of shredders by companies to process yard waste on site, turning 60,000 tonnes of waste into useful resources. To address the challenge of chicken manure disposal, the team also helped organic fertilizer producers enter into long-term agreements to purchase the manure at 60 yuan per tonne. These agreements saved the producers 100 yuan per tonne in raw material costs while helping poultry farms address the environmental challenges of manure disposal.

Ruan’s standard for judging her students’ development is straightforward: can they truly commit themselves to working alongside farmers?

In 2012, during his first six months at an STB, a student surnamed Dong filled his diary with entries such as “I can’t sleep because of the mosquito bites” and “A big yellow dog is my only companion every day.” Ruan often accompanied him in the fields, crouching beside him as she taught him to identify plant diseases and explain technical concepts in language farmers could understand.

Six months later, Dong had learned to operate a loader and was helping farmers tackle diseases affecting their chili peppers. Today, he is a regional manager at a major organic fertilizer company. Every year, he thanks Ruan for “not going easy on me back then.”

In 2024, another student, Zhang Wanying, began working at the Wuzhishan Large-Leaf Tea STB. When farmers turned down her request to rent land for experiments, Ruan advised her: “Go out into the field and find the answers.”

Zhang visited five villages, collected 51 soil samples, and surveyed 80 farming households. She also learned how to process tea through hands-on training. The precision fertilization plan she developed increased tea yields by an average of 44.1% and raised farmers’ income by 2,180 yuan per mu (approximately 667 square meters). Through livestream sales, she also helped tea farmers sell more than 150 kilograms of tea in a single month.

Ruan’s next step is to bring together the experience gained across individual STBs through a coordinated network.

One priority is to develop STB clusters. Hami melon STB projects across five counties are being brought together into a coordinated network serving the industry. Joint trials across different regions will help develop standardized solutions that can be adopted more widely.

Another priority is to develop agricultural AI agents. Building on the technological foundations provided by DeepSeek and Alibaba Cloud, among others, Ruan plans to integrate research findings accumulated across the STBs into AI agent systems. The goal is to develop 10–20 agents over the next five years and make them available to farmers through an app, providing intelligent services at every stage from cultivation to sales. The first product is planned for launch by the end of this year.

Ruan still keeps several pairs of old shoes in her shoe cabinet at home, their soles worn through and stained with Hainan’s red soil. They serve as a quiet reminder of how local farmers’ initial skepticism gradually gave way to trust in her.

Over the next five years, Ruan will remain committed to working alongside farmers to solve practical problems, sharing the approaches and methods developed in the field with more young agricultural professionals.

Translated by Tang Simin

Proofread by Xie Gengquan