Villager Zhang Zhengcai raises more than 60 geese in his backyard under the guidance of the village development association, established by a Hong Kong-based NGO, Oxfam. Zhang Yue / China Daily

But life has improved for the 40-year-old after a Hong Kong-based NGO, Oxfam, established a "village development association" to help the villagers increase food production.

Liu was the first woman in the village to join the association, which boasts of 14 members now. As her husband suffers from bad health, Liu is the family's sole breadwinner, supporting four school-age children.

"When I first met people from Oxfam, I thought, they look so different from us," Liu recalls. "They came to our houses and fields to teach us to grow maize. They seemed too good to be true. I used to think, why would they help us for nothing in exchange?"

Oxfam introduced a new type of maize that ripens a month earlier than normal corn, making is possible for farmers to reap better earnings because their harvests are marketed earlier.

Liu's income doubled after she started growing the new species of maize, which commands 8 yuan per kilogram compared to the older variety which sells at 4 yuan.

The association also teaches villagers to raise geese to supplement their income. Zhang Zhengcai, a 50-year-old villager, started with only one goose last year, but he now has more than 60 geese in his backyard.

"It is not an easy job to run the association to help the villagers," says Ji Jiaqin, 39, who founded the village development project. "Communication is the first and biggest challenge." Most of the villagers speak their own dialect, and very few can understand Mandarin.

"We hope to upgrade them continuously so that their income will increase and they will be more knowledgeable," Ji says.

To do that, Oxfam leads familiarization tours to other model agriculture villages. In 2011, Liu joined one of those tours to Zunyi in Guizhou, and Chongqing municipality. "I realized after the trip the importance of education for my kids," Liu says. "If not for the tour, I would have asked my kids to work in the farm."

Zhang, the village head, says that while government support is crucial to improve the villagers' lives, help from grassroots societies such as Oxfam is vital.

"They are nice and patient, and understand what we need," Zhang says. "People like Ji spend weeks living with villagers to assist them."

Oxfam celebrates its 25th year in the Chinese mainland. The organization's main agenda has been to fight poverty through improving the living standard of rural folk. Apart from Bijie, Oxfam has launched similar projects in 29 other places.

To commemorate its anniversary, Oxfam is also holding a 10-day art exhibition from Aug 11-20 in Beijing. The exhibition displays 16 celebrated artists' works that depicts the lives of rural people and the effect of food shortage.

"The keys are in the farmers' hands," says Sun Xuebing, policy and campaign unit director of Oxfam. "Now, an estimated of 193 million small farms in China feed 580 million people. By helping farmers, we help everybody."

zhangyue@chinadaily.com.cn