Luo Zhaoming Chases His Agricultural Dream in the Fields

In Qingyuan District, Luo Zhaoming, supervisor of the Futian Emerging Grain Industrialization Professional Cooperative, is a legendary farmer. In just a few years, his grain-growing scale expanded from 1,600 mu to 3,700 mu, making him a veritable large-scale grain producer. Nowadays, he drives a luxury car and flies an aircraft to farm every day.

On April 21, I met him at the cooperative's grain production base. He was directing workers to spray pesticides and kill insects by remote-controlled aircraft. "One aircraft can spray pesticides on about 60 mu of land in an hour, equivalent to the workload of more than 50 able-bodied young workers." Luo Zhaoming's face was filled with pride. The cooperative now has 26 professional agricultural machinery operators and is equipped with a series of large agricultural machines including tillers, fully automatic rice germinators, high-speed ride-on rice transplanters, plant protection drones, harvesters, transport loaders, and grain dryers, achieving full mechanization of production operations.

In his early years, Luo Zhaoming worked in transportation and contracted mountain forests, and was a local "big spender." In 2010, he suddenly gave up his booming business and returned to his hometown to become a farmer. "At the time, my relatives and friends all said I was out of my mind." Luo Zhaoming said. That year, he transferred more than 1,600 mu of land from the people to grow organic rice and practice ecological agriculture. "Although the returns were good, the costs were too high and it was hard work."

Futian is a small mountain town. The land is uneven, with many small plots and few large ones, few ditches and poor water flow. Many places still rely on traditional farming, which can only use manual labor, not machinery, and yields are low. Luo Zhaoming explained that in 2010, because we underestimated the situation, we did not organize enough labor during the "double rush" period, and later could not hire laborers, so some rice rotted in the fields, and some plots lacked water and could not be planted with second-crop late rice. "Looking at this abandoned land, the pain in my heart was beyond words!"

Through public selection and competitive project approval, in 2010 Qingyuan District's first national small-scale farmland water conservancy key county project landed in Futian Town. The district adhered to the water management approach of "water entering through multiple channels, stored in one pool, and released through one tap," integrating 38.5 million yuan of agriculture-related funds from water affairs, agriculture, land, agricultural development, poverty alleviation and other sources, vigorously promoting high-standard farmland construction, renovating more than 340 km of channels, adding 15,600 mu of effective irrigation area, and building 21,100 mu of high-standard farmland, turning "rain-fed hills" into high-yield fields.

The high-standard farmland, which "can be irrigated in drought, drained in floods, and accessed by machinery," gave wings to the district's modern agricultural development. In 2012, Luo Zhaoming seized the opportunity to transfer more than 2,000 mu of land, bringing the total to 3,700 mu, and invested 3.8 million yuan to purchase "high-end" agricultural machinery for seedling raising, machine transplanting, pesticide application, harvesting and drying, "switching from a bird gun to a cannon." "The effect of large-scale mechanical farming is simply different. With a rumbling sweep, thousands of mu of farmland can be completed in ten days to half a month. In the past, this was unimaginable. In recent years, we have not let a single plot of land go to waste." Luo Zhaoming said. "The key is that it solved the problem of hiring workers and also saved production costs."

In 2012, under the guidance of Yuan Longping's research team, Luo Zhaoming trial-planted new varieties such as Jiayu 99 and Xinmeixiangzhan, with an average yield of 900 jin per mu. That year, grain production was a great harvest, with total output reaching 3,300 tons and total revenue of more than 8.5 million yuan. In 2014, he extended the modern agricultural development chain and founded Jiangxi Tianying Brothers Aviation Technology Co., Ltd., vigorously promoting plant protection drones while also providing pesticide and pest control services for nearby large grain producers, "freeing them from heavy manual labor."

Standing amid the boundless green waves, with the wind blowing and fragrance filling the air, one feels relaxed and joyful. Before his eyes, the lush green rice seedlings were growing delightfully, strengthening Luo Zhaoming's original aspiration and filling him with confidence about the future: "With the support of small-scale farmland water conservancy, we have more confidence in modern agricultural development, our steps are more solid, and we are more confident in expanding organic agriculture, strengthening ecological agriculture, invigorating leisure agriculture, and beautifying tourism agriculture."