Gave up a monthly salary of over 10,000 yuan to return home and start a business, successfully exemplifying the new farmer

In 2015, Li Xuhui, who had drifted in big cities working in electronics technology for many years, decided after much deliberation to return home and start a business. From big city to small village, and a career starting almost from scratch, this series of contrasts gave him a taste that was both strange and familiar. Live off the mountain if you live by one, live off the water if you live by one - his hometown being a traditional agricultural county, he set his mind on changing the local planting structure. From selling agricultural supplies when he first entered the industry, to later becoming a grower plus online sales agent, though starting a business was hard, persistence also brought rewards. In 2016, in just half a year, he raised his monthly transaction volume from 1,000 yuan to 200,000 yuan. What secret exactly lies behind his success?

Li Xuhui, who lives in Dongzhangji Village, Guyang Township, Lankao County, Kaifeng City, Henan Province, is a genuine rural kid. Like others, after graduating from university he chose to stay in big cities to develop his career, and Shanghai, Weihai, and Kunshan all bear traces of his struggles. But after getting married, as he approached the age of 30, although he lived a respectable white-collar life in a big city, this kind of life could never give him a sense of belonging, and gradually he began to conceive the idea of returning home to start a business. Quick-witted as he was, he discovered the development space of the internet, and began researching the market. The first thing he thought of was Taobao, the most famous platform on the internet, but after research he found that the Taobao industry for industrial goods in the Jiangsu-Zhejiang-Shanghai area was already very developed, and relying only on his own strength alone, it would be very difficult to find any room for development.

While disappointed, he discovered the huge contrast between agriculture in the Shandong area and agriculture in his hometown. Why couldn't the land in his hometown that grew staple grains be converted to growing vegetables and fruits with higher added value, like in the Shandong area? If he took the initiative to change his hometown's planting structure and succeeded, wouldn't he be able to succeed in his own career while also leading the villagers of his hometown to improve their lives together?

With his own ideas, he acted as soon as he spoke. Although his understanding of agricultural planting and the market was not thorough, he began with the agricultural supplies market, which had the broadest business scope, and after more than a year of accumulating experience, he started the Lankao County Wanmutian Planting Professional Cooperative, transferring and contracting nearly 100 mu of land to convert to growing vegetable products such as potatoes and onions. Compared with the previous single planting structure, the sales profit of vegetable cultivation formed a huge contrast with the previous staple grains, and many farmers also began to join his cooperative. But new problems soon arrived. Although production had now gone up, the sales channel for agricultural products became a problem. Thinking of his earlier internet research experience in the Jiangsu-Zhejiang-Shanghai area, he began posting supply information for himself and local agricultural products on the internet. Although he had no previous experience operating electronic platforms, with his work experience in electronic technology he quickly found the knack, and in a very short time posted the information on various mainstream e-commerce platforms. But things went contrary to his wishes: the posting effect was not as ideal as he had imagined, and his hometown's agricultural products found it hard to attract buyers' attention on comprehensive platforms crowded with a great variety of products.

Although the online sales effect was not good, outside of work he still persistently searched online for new platforms to try. During a chat with a friend in the same industry, the other person mentioned an agricultural product trading platform called Yimutian, and praised it, saying that his own family's agricultural products had recently been sold through this platform. Li Xuhui quickly took out his phone, downloaded and installed the app, and posted the sales information he had previously posted on other platforms onto the platform.

After that, the previously sporadic calls from buyers gradually increased, and the number of completed transactions for the cooperative's agricultural products also began to climb. He knew this was the effect of the Yimutian platform, and afterward the good results made him increase his investment of time: higher frequency, newer updates, and postings for more products, plus more cost-effective prices, and so on. Bit by bit, his shop's page views got better and better, and his phone also began ringing nonstop. The number of completed transactions for the cooperative's agricultural products grew even more. Although there were many calls for products he himself could not satisfy, Li Xuhui still patiently told the other party all the information he knew; there were also many calls that were merely to ask him about market conditions, and Li Xuhui still adhered to the principle of first being friends, then doing business, and always patiently served every call that came to him.

Hard work pays off. From March 2016 to the end of June 2016, Li Xuhui's shop page views on the Yimutian platform reached 15,000, and the number of calls actively contacting him also exceeded 400. He also raised the monthly transaction volume of the cooperative he operated from 1,000 yuan to 200,000 yuan, a full 20-fold change. All the previous hardship and exhaustion at this moment made him feel it was worthwhile. And behind this series of numbers is the continuous innovative effort of a new farmer; it is a sign of an old farmer transforming into a new farmer.

Although 200,000 is not a large sum for many people, in traditional agricultural product trade, those worth tens of millions are not rare. But this kind of growth is the latest change among upstream growers of agricultural products, and as for the income of previous traditional agricultural growers, how many of them had 200,000? So this achievement has always encouraged Li Xuhui, and he is even more confident in running his cooperative. Li Xuhui said he wants, through his own efforts, to enable the folks in his hometown who rely on agricultural product cultivation to escape poverty and become rich like himself, and to let the post-80s and post-90s who work away from home see that even if they do not work in big cities, they can still achieve a career. In today's rapidly developing era, Li Xuhui is not an isolated case. In the future, countless new farmers of all kinds will surely lead Chinese agriculture to innovate out new vitality, and enable growers to truly achieve high yields and good harvests.