In the countryside in September, the fields are full of the scene of a bumper harvest. September is exactly the season for the rice harvest. In the fields you can see the figure of combine harvesters and the busy figures of farmers holding sickles and half-buckets as they harvest rice in the fields. But the farmers in the fields are not as happy as you might imagine.Why is that?

An old farmer in the countryside, who has grown crops in the countryside his whole life, was harvesting rice. His brows were tightly furrowed, and he kept shaking his head. The farmer said a whole year of hard work is not even worth the cost of one meal at a hotel in the city.

The cost of rice-growing materials and labor is high

In the early stage of growing rice, you need to buy rice seeds and fertilizer. In addition, every field needs to hire a machine or an ox to plow the field. With rice materials plus labor costs, the old farmer had already put in a sum of money in the early stage of rice growing.

Hilly terrain makes large-scale mechanization difficult, and the fees are not cheap

The terrain of this rural area is hilly terrain, not plains. So the mechanization and popularization of combine harvesters is relatively difficult. Although every year during the rice threshing season many combine harvesters park by the roadside waiting for farmers to call them to harvest, the price of such combine harvesters is not cheap.

One mu of land is charged at least 300 yuan, and if the place is too remote, the combine harvesters are unwilling to go. Farmers can only hire laborers or have their own family members harvest the rice by hand.

The selling price of rice is low, farmers do not make money and instead lose money

The rural terrain and mechanization problems aside, what hurts farmers most is the price of rice. In the past, when rice was not high-yielding, the price was not bad. But now we are already a major rice country, and the national grain reserves are very abundant, so the price at the grain purchasing station is not high, and this year the rice price in the countryside here is only 1.2 yuan per jin. Farmers cannot find other sales channels, and can only sell to the grain purchasing station in the town.

The farmers themselves did a simple calculation. For one mu of land, buying grain seeds, buying fertilizer, hiring people to plow the land, hiring labor for transplanting rice seedlings and so on, not counting the labor of the farmer's own family, these add up to about 800 yuan. And one mu of land at best yields 1000 jin, which is 1200 yuan. So one mu of land earns at most about 400 yuan.

When the old farmer calculated this, he could not help but shed tears. After a whole year of hard work, even counting the best harvest, it is only 400 yuan per mu of land. Working in the city, at best you can earn 400 in a day, and 400 yuan might not even be enough for a meal at some hotels in the city.

What is the price of rice in your hometown?

This article is excerpted from: Local Country Bumpkin. If there is any infringement, please contact us to delete it.