Cooperative becomes members' money purse, finding the road to prosperity through practice

Wang Fenghua is the full-time family planning officer of Zhaowa Village, Shiwuliyuan Town, Yanggu County, Shandong Province, and also the chairman of Yanggu Fenghua Grain Professional Cooperative. She is short in stature, dark-complexioned, and utterly unremarkable in appearance. But throughout the surrounding villages and townships, when people mention Wang Fenghua, they involuntarily give a thumbs-up: “Fenghua is truly a veritable strong woman. She founded the cooperative and led us onto the road to prosperity.”

Finding the road to prosperity through practice

As early as 1996, Wang Fenghua raised chickens together with her husband, and her family was among the better-off in the village. In earlier years, most of the young and middle-aged laborers in the village went out to work, leaving behind mostly the elderly, women and children, who, because of poor discernment when choosing seeds, fertilizers and pesticides, were often cheated. After investigating through many channels, Wang Fenghua discovered that in some places farmers' cooperatives could solve this problem. So she reported the idea to the town and village leaders, and her idea immediately received strong support from the town and village. Once decided, she acted. Wang Fenghua decided to start with the seed business and got in touch with the town seed station. The seeds she sourced won the villagers' trust because of their high quality and low price. In 2012, she went to Beijing in person to attend training, learn about cooperatives, and set about establishing a cooperative, which in its very first batch recruited 100 member households.

Using the cooperative to cultivate new-type farmers

While continuously learning agricultural technical knowledge and improving her own qualities, Wang Fenghua made full use of her advantageous position as a distance-education administrator to lead the members in learning together and improving together. To boost planting efficiency, under the guidance of agricultural experts from the province, city and county, the cooperative carried out advanced techniques on its own base, including substituting rotary tillage for plowing, water-saving irrigation, and "one spray, three preventions," greatly increasing grain yields. At the same time, production costs were reduced, labor was saved, and 200 yuan per mu could be saved in expenses each year. In the course of its development, the cooperative also received strong support from the town finance department; the head of the town finance office visited the site many times to learn about the situation and successively invested more than 100,000 yuan in fiscal funds for the cooperative's development.

Making the cooperative the members' "money purse"

⟦NL> With the strong support of the local Party committee and government and the efforts of the cooperative, after more than 2 years of development, the cooperative has further grown and strengthened. Last year, members received 210,000 yuan in dividends, and member households increased their income by more than 35% compared with non-member households. Last year, the cooperative created two trademarks, "Gujie" and "Shiwuliyuan," and, relying on the trademark brands, developed contract farming. The grain sold by the cooperative was 5 fen per jin higher than the market price; from this alone, member households earned 100 yuan more per mu of land. In March 2013, Fenghua Planting Professional Cooperative was awarded the title of "Women's Professional Cooperative Demonstration Cooperative" by the Provincial Women's Federation.

Speaking of the cooperative's future direction, Wang Fenghua confidently laid out her grand plans: First, by attracting farmers to join the cooperative and through land transfer and other means, integrate the land of surrounding villages and strive to create a grain-producing base of more than 5,000 mu; building on last year's successful application for the two trademarks "Gujie" and "Shiwuliyuan," strive this year to successfully apply for pollution-free agricultural product certification and green food certification; accelerate the construction of a grain deep-processing industrial system, build the "Gujie" series of products, plan to establish a stone-mill flour processing plant, extend the grain industry chain, and increase the added value of grain.