Post-90s Beauty of the "Second Farming Generation" Realizes Her Dream of Ecological Agriculture, Making Farming Trendy
The Inheritors
What is it like for a post-90s returnee girl to run over 1,000 mu of farmland? Perhaps only 26-year-old Zhang Wenwen knows the bittersweetness of it all. In 2012, after studying in Australia for 6 years, Zhang Wenwen gave up a high-paying job offer abroad and returned to the vegetable cooperative her father founded single-handedly in Sanshui. To outsiders, she seemed inexperienced in the ways of the world, yet she took on the role of business director at a monthly salary of 3,000 yuan and began cultivating her dream of modern ecological agriculture.
“In the future, the park will be built into an agricultural park, so that city people can come here and experience the joy of growing vegetables.” While helping her parents manage the cooperative, Zhang Wenwen also quickly began trying out new ideas for modern agriculture: testing the waters of community-based experiential ecological agriculture O2O; and attempting deep processing of agricultural products, striving to make farming “fun” and “trendy.”
In the future, she hopes to connect with the capital market and open up a new path for the cooperative's development.
What made her return to the land?
She gave up a million-yuan annual salary simply because she was optimistic about the future of agriculture
In 2006, at just 16 years old, Zhang Wenwen went to Australia to study accounting. “Our family is fairly well-off, but to cultivate my ability to live independently, my father gave me not a single cent for living expenses apart from tuition, and I had to earn it all myself through part-time work.” Zhang Wenwen said her father wanted to make her understand in this way that money is not so easily earned.
“During the 6 years of studying abroad, I did 4 part-time jobs and even opened a coffee shop.” Zhang Wenwen said that besides academics, the biggest gain from studying abroad was honing her ability to live independently. “During that time, I worked odd jobs, served as a retail store supervisor, and later opened a coffee shop. This gave me a clear understanding of the market, raw material procurement, cost control, and various other aspects, and also laid the foundation for starting a business later.”
“When I graduated, someone offered me a million-yuan annual salary to stay.” Zhang Wenwen said that after much deliberation, she still gave up the high-paying position, chose to return to China, and devoted herself to the vegetable professional cooperative founded by her father.
Zhang Wenwen's father also faced pressure from relatives and friends around him. “I still remember the day I returned to China. My father came to pick me up at the airport. When the car stopped at a gas station, my father suddenly stopped the car and asked me, 'Dad's company is not some tech enterprise. Do you really not regret it?'” Zhang Wenwen said that at the time she could not make any guarantees either, but driven by the considerable prospects of domestic agricultural development, she felt that through her own efforts she could likewise achieve something.
She walks the fields in high heels to “farm”
North of Datang Town in Sanshui District, passing the central primary school and following the riverside road straight ahead for about two kilometers, is where Zhang Wenwen's agricultural park is located. Across the vast fields of over a thousand mu, different crop planting areas are neatly and orderly distributed, with taro, winter melon, grapes, dragon fruit, and other varieties gradually entering the harvest season. On the farm, workers shuttle back and forth under the vegetable trellises, watering and fertilizing the crops. Not far away, the towering river embankment is covered in green grass, the quiet West River flows gently by, and distant green hills stretch like dark eyebrows.
Zhang Wenwen, in 5-cm high heels, walks steadily and briskly along the field ridges of the park. Seeing her approach, the workers take off their bamboo hats and warmly greet her. Zhang Wenwen also stops to ask about the planting situation for the next round of crops. It is hard to imagine that this fair-skinned, stylishly dressed post-90s girl is actually one of the heads of this cooperative.
Several years ago, to test self-developed organic fertilizer, Zhang Wenwen's father leased a piece of farmland nearby and began growing organic vegetables. After several years of development, the Shunzhao Vegetable Professional Cooperative, founded single-handedly by Zhang Wenwen's father Zhang Xiangdong, has reached a planting area of over a thousand mu. “I don't usually work in the agricultural park.” Zhang Wenwen said with a smile that every time she sees the simple and honest villagers, she feels a sense of returning to nature.
She created an experiential ecological agriculture O2O model
After returning to China, Zhang Wenwen took on the role of the cooperative's business director at a monthly salary of 3,000 yuan. That salary was even lower than that of the vegetable-growing workers in the park. Zhang Wenwen said that in the park, hiring a vegetable farmer with technical know-how costs 6,000 yuan a month. “I believe that first you have to create value in your position and make the pie bigger before you can talk about returns.” Zhang Wenwen said. “Although my father runs the cooperative, I know nothing about agricultural planting techniques. My strengths lie in finance and business development.” Zhang Wenwen's responsibilities at the cooperative include strategy, operations, and business development plans.
Inspired by the green, pollution-free community fresh food supermarkets abroad, Zhang Wenwen hopes to extend the industrial chain on the basis of the cooperative's existing production, logistics, and sales systems, and explore a community-based experiential ecological agriculture O2O model.
After returning to Foshan, Zhang Wenwen set about establishing the “Xianweizhen” community fresh food chain stores, selling agricultural products from her own vegetable garden. Within just two years, the cooperative opened 5 chain stores in Foshan and built its own delivery team to connect with customers and save costs.
Zhang Wenwen said: “Due to high labor costs, the current several stores can only break even, but I think this is a model that builds our own brand and can be replicated, and my father also approves of it, so we have kept at it all along.”
What unique “business philosophy” does she have?
Her idea: make a fashionable chili sauce
Zhang Wenwen said that like other post-90s people, she wants to create some end products through continuous experimentation, making farming “fun” and “trendy.” “For example, recently I ate a homemade chili sauce at a friend's shop, and it tasted excellent. I thought, my park also grows chilies, so could I also make a fashionable chili sauce?” she said.
“This is no joke. Just growing crops is not enough to support the cooperative.” Zhang Wenwen, who has managed the cooperative for 4 years, said earnestly that land rent and labor costs are high, each cut of a worker's knife costs three mao, and a vegetable wholesale price below 1.5 yuan is not enough to recover costs.
“Vegetable prices are also greatly affected by market fluctuations, so we need to find 'living water' and increase the added value of agricultural products through multiple channels.” Zhang Wenwen said the cooperative Zhaozhao also plans to deep-process some vegetables in the park, such as winter melon slices and dehydrated organic vegetables. She said “small accounts fear constant calculation,” and after taking over her father's cooperative, she feels more deeply the hardships he endured, and has learned to live life in a more “meticulous and calculating” way.
In terms of diversification, Zhang Wenwen, who is optimistic about the prospects of leisure and sightseeing agriculture, also plans to build the park into an agricultural park with a romantic pastoral atmosphere. “In the future, by the North River, we'll plant a field of rapeseed flowers and also build a swimming pool.” In the blueprint Zhang Wenwen describes, the agricultural cooperative base should not just be a production base, but also a place where people can personally go into the fields to grow vegetables and experience the joy of farming.
Her persistence: it is not yet time to do fresh food e-commerce
As a post-90s returnee, Zhang Wenwen brought new concepts and new models of agricultural management and development to the cooperative. “As long as I can present data to persuade everyone, my father is happy to leave it to me.” Zhang Wenwen said that their first major disagreement arose over views on “Internet + agriculture.” In her father Zhang Xiangdong's view, as the Internet generation gradually marries and settles down, the purchasing patterns for agricultural products such as vegetables and fruits will also change. If the enterprise does not lay the groundwork in advance to be able to accommodate this change in consumption habits, it may lose the market in the future.
But Zhang Wenwen believed that testing the waters of fresh agricultural product e-commerce was not yet mature under the current market environment. “Ordinary melons, fruits, and vegetables can hardly bear the high costs of preservation and logistics, and even if they can, it is difficult to guarantee stable product quality.” In the end, the e-commerce delivery project that Zhang Xiangdong cooperated on with friends also ended in failure, which made Zhang Xiangdong, who had eagerly embraced “Internet + agriculture,” become more cautious.
Her vision: take the family business public
Taking the family business public is the shared wish of Zhang Wenwen and her father.
Unlike the cooperative, another agricultural technology company run by Zhang Wenwen's father specializes in the research and development and production of bio-organic fertilizers, and Zhang Wenwen also serves as its business director. “Now the new company follows listed-company standards in finance and management. Our goal is, through complementing the cooperative, to turn the company into a listed agricultural enterprise.”
Zhang Wenwen said that China is transitioning toward a consumer society, and ordinary people need better and safer agricultural products, while leveraging the capital market is an effective way to make agricultural enterprises bigger and stronger and achieve large-scale production. “For agricultural enterprises to connect with capital, the most important thing is that the brand can be replicated. At present, we are all working toward this.” Zhang Wenwen said.
The reporter learned that under the leadership of Jinnong Company and Shunzhao Cooperative, Shunfeng Vocational Training School has also been established, providing farmers with services such as agricultural production management skills and sharing agricultural production information. At present, this vocational farmer training base set up in the fields has carried out more than 50 training services of various kinds. Both Zhang Wenwen and her father hope that through professional training, more new-type professional farmers such as modern agricultural industry leaders, agricultural professional service talent, and frontline agricultural production experts will emerge from here in the future.