Chengdu Jinjiang 'Huiya Farm' — School Labor Education Base (Jinjiang District Academy of Education Sciences Affiliated Middle School)

Summary

Huiya Farm (慧雅农场) is the campus farm of the Jinjiang District Academy of Education Sciences Affiliated Middle School (锦江区教科院附属中学) in Chengdu, Sichuan — one of the district's first officially designated labor-education base schools, and an inspection site for the national K-12 labor-education on-site conference held in Chengdu in October 2021. The school runs a "three workshops, four rooms, one farm" structure (woodworking, intangible-heritage, and cooking workshops; four practical classrooms; plus the farm). The farm is divided into 27 plots, each contracted to one of 27 classes under a responsibility system: students handle the full cycle of soil moving, loosening, sowing, seedling raising, transplanting, watering, fertilizing, pest control, and harvest, with biology and geography teachers plus professional agricultural technicians providing guidance. Two rotations per year (spring and autumn) match the Sichuan climate; harvests (sweet potato, peanut, cucumber, tomato, chili, pak choi) are distributed by each class to families, the canteen, or community sales. The district complements school farms with off-campus bases ("七彩田野", "玫瑰园") and research-institute partnerships, planning 20 bases within three years. Notably, the farm also anchors technology integration: a junior-high information-technology project-based learning case, "构建慧雅农场科技灌溉系统" (Building the Huiya Farm Smart Irrigation System), was presented at a district new-curriculum-standard practice seminar hosted on the Chaoxing platform. No official program page was found, so the primary source field is flagged unknown; details rest on state-media reporting and the seminar listing.

Guiding Principles

Food Sovereignty — students control the full production cycle and decide how harvests are used (family, canteen, community sale), experiencing food production as an owned, closed loop.
STEM Integration — the farm doubles as an information-technology project site (student-built smart irrigation), linking agriculture with sensors and control.
Youth Empowerment — the class-contract responsibility system gives each class genuine authority over its plot ("accepting the plaque means accepting the responsibility").

Learning Outcomes & Transferable Skills

Students gain Food Production skills (two rotations of real crops), Project Management (year-long plot stewardship), Biology/ecology knowledge delivered by subject teachers on-site, Data Literacy and Systems Thinking through the smart-irrigation IT project, and Sustainability Literacy via organic-fertilizer and beneficial-insect practices reported in district coverage.

How to Replicate or Build On It

Adopt the structural pattern: multiple hands-on workshops plus one campus farm, with a weekly timetabled labor-education class.
Implement the class-contract system: divide the farm into class plots with plaques and a responsibility handover.
Pair with subject teachers (biology/geography) and, where possible, a local agricultural technician for process guidance and growth assessment.
Layer in technology with a student-built irrigation/monitoring project, as in the "构建慧雅农场科技灌溉系统" case; the tsinghua-it-textbook-aquaponics offers a curriculum anchor for the control-systems side.

Considerations & Constraints

Cost: Low — soil-based plots, basic tools, drip irrigation; no high-tech requirement for the core model.
Skill Level: Beginner — primary/secondary students with teacher and technician support.
Space/Climate: Outdoor platform/rooftop or ground plots; temperate subtropical Chengdu climate supports two rotations/year.
Tools Required: Hand tools, soil/compost, irrigation (drip lines), optional microcontroller kit for smart irrigation.
Ongoing Maintenance: Moderate — daily/weekly tending through the growing season; class rotation spreads the load.
Access Barriers: No official program page or published curriculum document was located (primary source unknown); available documentation is Chinese-language news coverage of the 2021 national conference inspection and a seminar course listing on the Chaoxing platform. Verify current status with the school/district before citing as active.

Prerequisites

None. Comparable model: haimen-shared-farm. Policy context: education-power-plan-2024-2035.

Primary Source

unknown — no official program page was found as of 2026-09-12. Corroborating (non-primary) sources: People's Daily Sichuan channel report on the Jinjiang "farm + education base" system and Huiya Farm, http://sc.people.com.cn/n2/2021/1021/c379469-34967867.html ; Chaoxing seminar listing including the case "构建慧雅农场科技灌溉系统", https://mooc1.chaoxing.com/phone/nodedetailcontroller/visitnodedetail?courseId=235033407&knowledgeId=746822465 . Logged for the gaps file.