China is an agricultural country with 63.91% of its total population living in rural areas. As traditional agriculture is being gradually replaced by modern agriculture, low level of science literacy of Chinese farmers has considerably hindered productivity in the agriculture sector. As a consequence, the farmers are still poor, so it is crucial for Chinese farmers to learn modern agricultural methods in order to eliminate poverty. However, due to insufficient qualified personnel and lack of technical services, urgent needs of the farmers are not met. While agricultural technicians are locally available in large numbers, their knowledge has not been fully applied in agricultural practices; thus a big information gap exists between technicians and farmers. Therefore a proper communication channel and a cooperative guarantee system need to be established so as to pass on science and technology (S&T) information from the “rich region” to the “needy region”. With this background, a pilot Project of agricultural science communication has been launched. Based on “Voluntary Registration & Mutual Selection”, lots of technicians were hired by the local government as ‘Technical Task Force (TTF)’. They lived and worked together with the local farmers. In their cooperative efforts they made technological as well as capital investment and share profits and losses to achieve “double win” and then they both become shareholders. This pilot Project to persuade Chinese farmers to use modern scientific methods is so successful that the government is expanding it across the whole country. This paper attempts to analyze the working mechanism of the innovative Project and discuss the relationships amongst local governments, farmers and TTF. The aim is to elaborate on an effective and successful practice of agricultural science communication between technicians and farmers in developing countries.

Technical Task Force (TTF)  /  agricultural science communication  /  pilot project