When local officials on the mainland proudly boast about their 'big agricultural county', it's usually a nice way of saying 'fiscally small county'.
Jianli county in Hubei province is a prime example. Honoured by the Ministry of Agriculture as a 'national pacesetter in grain production', the county of about 1.46 million people is too poor to pay its share of funding for policies introduced by the central government in recent years to support agriculture and farmers.
In addition to being funded by central and provincial government grants, these policies, from medical care to seed subsidies, require different percentages of supporting funding from local governments. But that amount is triple the 313 million yuan (HK$376.7 million) annual revenue of Jianli, according to Zhang Zhonglin, chief accountant of the county's finance bureau.
This problem, together with a shortage of talent in local government departments and of young labourers in the fields, has hampered efforts to enhance modern agriculture, which China has relied on to tackle a growing challenge of remaining self-sufficient in feeding nearly 1.4 billion people.
The dozen or so projects meant to benefit farmers, including a rural medical care system, pension system, environmental protection and subsidies for buying necessary materials, would cost the county nearly 1 billion yuan, according to Zhang's calculations.
As a result, the county did not spend anywhere near the required money on people's livelihoods, he said, stressing how difficult it would be to meet this year's requirement.