The road to prosperity for grain-farming couple Hao Jinwu and Zhang Hongxiang
Contracting around a hundred mu of farmland is not a particularly large scale among big grain growers, but in the hands of Hao Jinwu and Zhang Hongxiang, a couple in Shijia'an Village, Bianlin Town, Lingcheng District, the annual income reaches hundreds of thousands of yuan. They are truly skilled at getting rich. What is their secret?
Winter has now arrived, and after one more round of watering against the frost, this year's field work will be finished. In their spare time, the couple sat down to reckon up the year's income. This year's harvest was fairly good; not counting other income, the earnings from just the 147 mu of contracted farmland are quite considerable.
Zhang Hongxiang explained that one mu of wheat can earn more than 800 yuan, and corn can earn more than 700 yuan. With over a hundred and forty mu under contract, that comes to about 200,000 yuan; after deducting the costs of labor, pesticides, and fertilizer, they still clear around 100,000 yuan.
Hao Jinwu and Zhang Hongxiang previously worked at the Lingxian Electrical Factory and the Cotton Mill respectively. After those workplaces ran into trouble, the two became part of the earliest batch of laid-off workers to return to farming. Having just returned to the countryside, they found many things hard to get used to, and many people did not understand their decision, but getting rich through their own labor made them feel very grounded.
At first they only farmed the dozen or so mu belonging to their own family. In recent years, as young people in the village went out to work, fewer and fewer people farmed the land, so they gradually rented abandoned land from the villagers, slowly building up to their current scale. With scale, the returns kept getting better. Diligent and quick-thinking, having tasted the sweetness of getting rich through hard work, they also took up pig farming.
The couple turned the corn they grew into pig feed, and then used the pigs' daily manure as fertilizer for the fields. It was this simple idea of "recycling" that strengthened Hao Jinwu and Zhang Hongxiang's conviction to go into livestock farming. The couple bought feed-processing equipment and used their own grain for feeding, which lowered costs and also increased the fertility of the land.
Zhang Hongxiang told the reporter that because the pigs they raise are bred and raised by themselves, in years when pig prices are good, earning 50,000 to 60,000 yuan is no problem.
Once both farming and livestock raising had reached a certain scale, the couple firmly committed to the path of large-scale, mechanized, modern agriculture. They invested in buying large agricultural machinery. Besides serving their own family farm, each year they also provide mechanized services to others, which opened a new door to prosperity for them.
Hao Jinwu happily told the reporter that there were two machines for cutting wheat, two for cutting corn, and two for plowing, six in total, with a total investment of around 600,000 yuan.
Zhang Hongxiang and her husband are not only able to endure hardship and hard work, but also know how to run a business and keep their word, earning the trust of the surrounding villagers. More and more people come to them for harvesting, and over a single season the income is quite considerable. Not content with the status quo, Zhang Hongxiang this year also attended training for new-type professional farmers. Through studying and visiting, she broadened her horizons. She wants to add a drying machine, which would solve the current problem in rural areas of having nowhere to dry corn and wheat after harvest.
No longer limited to simply filling their pockets, Hao Jinwu and Zhang Hongxiang, having stepped outside their home, now have more ideas and ways of thinking about the current situation in agriculture and its future development. Zhang Hongxiang said that through the training she felt the state also attaches great importance to farmers. She is quite confident about agriculture and wants to become a new-type professional farmer who is knowledgeable, cultured, scientifically minded, and well-qualified.