Farmers in Shangcai County, Henan, pave a road to prosperity with their sweat

On February 20, spring was warm and the sunshine bright.

Walking into Gaoli Village, Shaodian Town, Shangcai County, a provincial-level key poverty-alleviation village in Henan, a newly built cement road runs through the village from west to east. As temperatures rose, the straw mats on top of villager Li Guosong's vegetable greenhouse had already been rolled up. Inside, rows of cucumber beds were all ready, and Li Guosong and his wife Shang Gou were scattering plant ash on the beds as markers for transplanting and setting out cucumber seedlings.

Li Guosong, 39 this year, told the reporter that he used to work away from home, and apart from the hardship and exhaustion, his wages were often withheld. In the summer of 2010, encouraged by village Party secretary Li Guoying, Li Guosong borrowed more than 100,000 yuan from relatives and friends and built 2 greenhouses and 2 slightly smaller seedling sheds. Having no technical knowledge, Li Guosong humbly sought advice and learned from large vegetable growers in nearby townships, and with his own exploration and practice, after several years he had fully mastered the techniques for growing and managing vegetables in greenhouses.

Li Guosong did the accounts: last winter, the 2 greenhouses of celery he planted had a bumper harvest, and the market was especially good, bringing in more than 100,000 yuan. Adding the income from 2 greenhouses of cucumbers and 2 greenhouses of tomatoes in the first half of the year, he made a net profit of 260,000 yuan for the whole year. In 2015, he also tore down the 3 dilapidated tile-roofed rooms he had lived in before and built a 2-story street-facing commercial building with a total area of more than 600 sq m.

Today, Li Guosong is not only a star of prosperity but also a major land operator. He has transferred 80 mu of land from villagers in his own and nearby villages and led the establishment of the Tengqi Planting Professional Cooperative in Shangcai County. Li Guosong said: "Next, I will further expand the scale of vegetable planting, rely on the cooperative to attract more farming households to develop specialty vegetable planting, so that villagers who transfer their land can not only get stable rent but also increase their labor income, and lead more poor neighbors to realize the dream of moderate prosperity together!"