More than 600 workers were transported some 850 kilometers by train in early May from the city of Suihua in Northeast China's Heilongjiang province to farms on the Sanjiang Plain to assist with the seasonal rice transplanting.

Due to a shortage of local farmhands, migrant workers travel to the Sanjiang Plain area for three weeks every year to help with transplanting. Most of them come from rural parts of Suihua.

Rice transplanting is a labor-intensive task involving rice seedlings grown in a nursery being pulled and planted into puddled and leveled fields.

Since 2000, China Railway Harbin Group has provided chartered train services during the transplanting season for the Sanjiang Plain, one of the major rice production areas in Heilongjiang. Over 1.9 million migrant workers have been transported by the service in the past 25 years.

Setting off from Qiqihar station, the train passes several large farms such as Jiansanjiang, Qianjin, Qianfeng and Honghe before arriving at its final destination — Fuyuan, a county-level city on the Sanjiang Plain.

Sun Lianjiang, a farmer on the Sanjiang Plain, picked up four migrant workers from the train on May 8 and took them to his 14-hectare farm.

Given the climate in Heilongjiang, the best time for transplanting rice is from May 5 to 25.

"Last year, thanks to the migrant workers, rice planting was finished on schedule and I had a good harvest," said 49-year-old Sun, who rents his farmland from Jiansanjiang Co, a subsidiary of Beidahuang Group in Heilongjiang.

"Last year, I generated over 400,000 yuan ($55,000) in sales from my rice. This year, I hope the transplanting of rice seedlings will go well and we can receive another good harvest in the autumn," he said.

Wei Ping, a 52-year-old from Xinlin town, Greater Hinggan Mountains prefecture, arrived at Qianjin Farm shortly after stepping off the chartered train early on the morning of May 8.

"I have come to this farm every spring since 2007," he said. "My employer has promised me a daily wage of 600 yuan for operating the rice transplanter."

Working with his wife, they can make around 30,000 yuan in less than a month, a large part of his family's income for the whole year.

Zhao Yesheng, a train attendant at Suihua Station, has witnessed changes in the makeup of the rice transplanting workers over the years. "In the past, farmers were very poor and relied on rice transplanting to earn bread for their families," he said. "Nowadays, with improved living conditions and the popularization of agricultural mechanization, I see the workers on the train have become younger and more fashionable."

To keep up with the passenger flow in May, the railway group has added trains on the rural route to ensure sufficient capacity.

The railway group has also collaborated with local governments and agricultural enterprises to provide employment guidance, skills training and job placement.

Zhao Hansheng, deputy director of the training department of the agricultural machinery general station in Suihua, gave a lecture to migrant workers on a train on May 7.

"With the continuous improvement of agricultural mechanization, the farmers have higher demands for agricultural knowledge and skills," he said. "I gave a short lecture on the operation, maintenance and common faults of rice transplanters.

Gao Hanwei, a train conductor on the route, said: "We have proactively coordinated with farms along the route, collected information on their demands on job types, farm details and contact information. We displayed the information on the train to establish a communication bridge between employers and the migrant workers."

zhouhuiying@chinadaily.com.cn