He never worries about selling his grain. How did he do it?
Although corn purchase prices are currently low and ordinary farmers are finding it hard to sell their corn, Li Bo, a large-scale grain farmer in Cheng'an County, Hebei Province, has no trouble selling his corn. Li Bo, who farms with an "industrial mindset," said with a smile: "My corn quality is among the best in the surrounding area, and the yield is both high and good, so big companies buy directly from me."
Traditional agricultural production relies more on feeling and experience, while industrial production emphasizes standardization and procedure. When a reporter recently interviewed in Cheng'an County, they happened to meet large-scale grain farmer Li Bo, and during a casual chat, a corn drying table he had made himself caught the reporter's attention.
Li Bo began transferring land for field crop cultivation in 2013, having previously worked in the construction industry. In just three years, the transferred land grew from a few dozen mu to 5,000 mu, putting him among the top in the local area in terms of scale.
Walking into his corn storage yard, golden corn cobs filled the courtyard, and threshers and dryers were running at full power with a roar.
"The corn has just been harvested now, so the moisture content is still relatively high. Ordinary farmers rely on natural sun-drying, but I have a large dryer here, and machine drying is obviously faster than sun-drying. That's not all. Even if some large-scale farmers have dryers, my drying technique is a standardized process, so moisture control is more reasonable."
At the reporter's repeated request, he brought out a corn drying record sheet. The sheet had seven columns: time, furnace temperature, hot air temperature, grain discharge revolutions, moisture at machine output, faults, and remarks. The reporter saw that in this table, every half hour, values were recorded in the corresponding columns.
Li Bo said: "This is my secret weapon. Corn drying is a technical job. With the same machine, different people operating it produce very different results. If dried too lightly, the moisture does not meet the standard; if dried too heavily, the corn surface scorches. If you rely only on the naked eye to judge, it is hard to get it right."
"I require workers to record the corresponding values every half hour. Grain depots require moisture not to exceed 15%, while some purchasing enterprises require moisture at 13.5%. Why make a table? It is to facilitate precise moisture control. No matter who operates it, they must operate strictly according to the process."
The reporter came to the dryer, where the operator took a corn sample and measured it with a moisture meter. "Enough data and reasonable time intervals are what ensure the proper moisture content," Li Bo said.
Li Bo said: "I worked in the construction industry for many years and developed the habit of having procedures and data for everything. Now farming is also transitioning from a layman to an old hand."