How Green Circular Agriculture Produces an Amplifying Effect

"This technique of intercropping grain and legumes has existed for a long time, but getting individual farming households to use it is really difficult. The reason is that each household has very little land, so it cannot achieve economies of scale," said Xue Yaohui, chairman of the Wanxin Farmers' Professional Cooperative in Gongzhuling City, Jilin Province. To transform integrated agricultural production technologies into a tremendous achievement benefiting ordinary farmers, it is necessary to innovate ideas and innovate technologies. As long as ideas are innovated, these integrated technologies can be boldly applied, bringing them into the fields and making them a scientific and technological force for farmers to prosper. Innovating technologies means further perfecting, improving and innovating these technologies in actual agricultural production practice, so that they truly play a boosting role in the development of modern agriculture.

Intercropping grain and legumes allows two projects to increase income at the same time. One is increased grain output and income, that is, increased output and income of corn and soybeans; the other is the "green income increase" from boosting soil fertility. In 2015, the Wanxin Cooperative set aside 30 hectares of farmland for an experiment in grain-legume intercropping. This technique requires planting four rows of soybeans and then four rows of corn in the same plot, intercropping in this repeating pattern. Because grain-legume intercropping pairs tall and short crops, the grain in the field gets good ventilation and sufficient sunlight, produces large ears, resists lodging, and the grain and legumes ripen to a high degree. This planting method allows dense planting of both soybeans and corn on every hectare. Take corn, for example: the Wanxin Cooperative can plant more than 73,000 plants per hectare. At the autumn yield measurement, the average corn yield per hectare was more than 27,000 jin, and soybeans about 5,200 jin. In Xue Yaohui's words: "By farming this way, on one hectare of farmland I harvest one hectare's worth of corn and additionally harvest one hectare's worth of soybeans. I plant one hectare of land but bring in two hectares' worth of grain. On our 30 hectares of experimental fields, besides normal income, we earned an extra 350,000 yuan."

Because chemical fertilizer inputs in farming have increased in recent years, some farmland has become severely compacted, and soil fertility has clearly declined. The advantage of grain-legume intercropping is that no variety is left in continuous cropping the following year; that is, the next year corn is planted on the soybean rows and soybeans on the corn rows. The rhizobia of soybeans benefit the growth of corn, and the roots of corn benefit the growth of soybeans; after rotting in the soil they become a green resource that builds soil fertility. Because grain and legumes are alternately rotated, the occurrence of pests and diseases is greatly reduced. At the same time, when harvesting corn and soybeans, the straw is either left as high stubble or crushed and returned directly to the field; these practices play an important role in alleviating soil compaction and increasing green fertility.

The cooperative also raises breeding cows so that grain straw and by-products gain added value through passing through the animals, achieving a green circular chain across the entire grain production industry. At the end of 2012, the cooperative spent 2 million yuan to buy 200 breeding cows for an experiment in raising livestock on grain straw and other by-products to add value. The experimental result was that one cow can consume the corn straw from one hectare of land in a year, one cow can produce 15-30 jin of cow manure organic fertilizer per day, and in a year can produce more than 4 tons of organic fertilizer, enough for one hectare of land. The 200 breeding cows can produce at least 170 calves each year; the calves are raised to 4 months for sale, and the sale price per calf is about 7,000 yuan, for an output value of nearly 1.2 million yuan.

Because cow manure organic fertilizer is returned to the field year after year, the cooperative's farmland has more and more organic matter and uses less and less chemical fertilizer; the grain produced has plump kernels, good taste, and is green and pollution-free. For this reason, more and more people gather here to buy the grain they produce. Now, from land, sowing, harvesting, processing and livestock raising to returning organic fertilizer to the field, their grain production has achieved a green cycle across the entire industry chain.

The highlights of the cooperative's income generation also lie in saving farmers money and turning waste into treasure. If members farmed from planting to harvest themselves, the cost per hectare would be 7,500 yuan; by handing the farming to the cooperative, it costs only 5,000 yuan per hectare, and by autumn they can just sit at home waiting for the grain harvest. After the grain is harvested, the cooperative stores it free of charge for the farmers; when farmers want to sell grain, the cooperative buys it at one fen per market jin above the market price. As for all the straw in the fields, the cooperative bales it and hauls it away to sell to power plants; each hectare produces more than 6 tons of dry straw, the power plant's recovery price is 240 yuan per ton, and the gross margin on straw per hectare is more than 1,400 yuan. After deducting various costs of 700 yuan, the cooperative earns 700 yuan per hectare, and the income from feeding straw to cattle is more than 900 yuan per hectare; each year the cooperative's income from straw alone reaches more than 500,000 yuan. Xue Yaohui said: "The purpose of doing this is, first, to effectively prevent farmers from burning straw in the fields after the autumn harvest and before planting, which causes environmental pollution. We turn the straw farmers discard into a growth point for the cooperative's profits, which both helps farmers clear their fields and does not delay the next year's spring plowing. Second, it benefits farmers: from plowing and planting to harvesting we charge only cost, letting members obtain the greatest benefit. Our member farmers increase their income by more than 2,600 yuan per hectare of farmland."