Gansu Tianshui vegetable farmer Li Shijun's road to prosperity through growing vegetables

With the rapid development of the economy, a large number of rural laborers leave their hometowns to seek work and opportunities elsewhere. However, in the vast countryside, there is a group of young people who stay in their hometowns and, with their own hard work and wisdom, make their dreams of prosperity bear rich fruit in the yellow earth. Li Shijun, a villager of Shenjiahe Village, Huaniu Town, Maiji District, is one of them.

Though the spring chill still lingers, Li Shijun has already begun busying himself in the fields.

"This year I plan to use the national poverty-alleviation loan to contract another 10 mu of land and build 5 more solar greenhouses. If everything goes smoothly, my net income will exceed 100,000 yuan," Li Shijun told the reporter full of confidence.

In 2014, Li Shijun, then 34 years old, contracted 6 mu of land in the village, planting 5 mu with open-field watermelons and melons, and building 2 solar greenhouses for vegetables on the other 1 mu, all planted with tomatoes. To manage these vegetables well, he ate and slept in the fields. However, due to a lack of technique, he applied too much manure to the tomatoes, causing all the nearly ripe tomatoes to be burned to death, and the vegetable greenhouses yielded nothing. Fortunately, that year the open-field watermelons and melons brought in nearly 45,000 yuan, and after deducting costs and losses, he still made more than 7,000 yuan.

The profit from his first year of entrepreneurship on the yellow earth strengthened his confidence in putting down roots in his hometown, and the failure of his first attempt at growing vegetables made him understand the importance of technique. In 2015, Li Shijun built 2 more steel-framed solar greenhouses, planting tomatoes, melons and watermelons inside. During this time, he persisted in learning vegetable-growing knowledge from books and the internet, and took the initiative to ask local vegetable farmers about greenhouse cultivation techniques. Thanks to proper management, the greenhouse cultivation achieved a bumper harvest: tomatoes and melons brought in 30,000 yuan, and watermelons also sold for nearly 30,000 yuan.

Having tasted success, Li Shijun felt even more confident about "writing his story" on the yellow earth. In 2016, Li Shijun used two greenhouses for raising seedlings in spring and growing spinach in autumn, and the other two greenhouses for growing high-yield vegetables such as tomatoes, while the open fields were used for watermelons and melons. With the help of his family, after a year of hard work, his net income that year reached 62,000 yuan. "Starting a business at my doorstep allows me to keep my wife and children company and also take care of my parents, which is far better than leaving home to struggle elsewhere," Li Shijun said to the author while working. "Now many of the country's policies favor farmers, and being a farmer is definitely not a losing proposition. Why must you go out to make money? As long as you use your head and are willing to endure hardship, you can make good money right at your doorstep."