The legendary story of Lu Xiuli getting rich through agricultural machinery

"Looking for Lu Xiuli? Go straight ahead, and when you see a small bridge, you've arrived." In Wangguanji Township, Sucheng District, everyone knows Lu Xiuli and the Xiuli Agricultural Machinery Service Cooperative she built from scratch; ask anyone and they can point you to her home.

Lu Xiuli, 36 this year, may not have much education, but she is endlessly self-reliant. From selling pancakes and contracting manual labor to running agricultural machinery services, raising seedlings, and growing greenhouse watermelons... Through diligence, wisdom, persistence, and extraordinary courage, she not only gave her own family a happy life but also led her fellow villagers onto the road to prosperity. Lu Xiuli has also received honors such as Jiangsu Province Star Agricultural Machinery Large Household and one of the Top Ten Women Entrepreneurship Stars, living out a prosperity legend of her own.

In 2000, shortly after their wedding, Lu Xiuli and her husband Shen Chao went to Suining, Xuzhou to make a living. In the spring of 2001, the birth of their son brought Lu Xiuli and her husband back to Wangguanji Township, where they began selling chemical fertilizer. After several twists and turns, guided by the belief that "with so much surplus labor in the countryside, what could we do that lets us work right at our doorstep?", Lu Xiuli started a business making throw pillows and cloth dolls by hand. At its peak, her handicraft workshop employed more than 800 workers, and people from surrounding villages and towns as well as from Xinyi and Suining flocked to Lu Xiuli looking for work.

However, every busy farming season gave Lu Xiuli a headache: farmers shifted from the handicraft workshop to their own fields, and many processing orders were delayed as a result. "The worst was the busy summer season of 2003, when the workers were all rushing home to harvest wheat and transplant rice. An order of more than 100,000 pieces was due urgently, but no workers could be found in Wangguanji Township. In the end, we only found people in Suyu District and Xinyi City to help me process it." After much thought, Lu Xiuli realized that during the busy summer season, farmers had to go into the fields to transplant rice and had no time for handicrafts. If rice transplanting were mechanized and no longer needed manual labor, wouldn't that solve the problem of unstable labor? The publicity she had once seen for machine rice transplanting came back to her mind. She then went to the city and district agricultural machinery extension stations to consult and learn about rice machine transplanting technology. The city and district agricultural machinery extension stations gave her strong support, arranging for Lu Xiuli and her husband Shen Chao to attend the city and district rice machine transplanting technology training and the rice transplanter operator skills training, and assigning dedicated staff to go deep into the fields to provide follow-up technical guidance throughout the process. From 2006 to 2007, despite strong opposition from her family, Lu Xiuli, with the help of the local agricultural machinery extension station, bought 3 rice transplanters one after another. At the time, an official in charge of agriculture at the Wangguanji Township government encouraged Lu Xiuli: "I never expected you to have such courage. We support you!"

"Rice transplanters were a new thing at the time, and one transplanter cost more than 70,000 yuan. Such an investment was unimaginable back then." To promote machine transplanting, Lu Xiuli and technicians from the agricultural machinery extension station went to Wangguanji Township and visited every village and group to publicize and promote it. At the time, people still knew little about machine transplanting, and the promotion did not go smoothly. Well-meaning people advised Lu Xiuli to give up, some mocked her, and others passed final judgment on her: "Just wait, this woman is going to lose her money!" "I cried many times! But I believed I was right." The criticism did not stop Lu Xiuli, and the convenience brought by agricultural mechanization was gradually seen and accepted by everyone. The villagers all said they never expected that Lu Xiuli, this "bold fool," would actually make machine transplanting succeed.

In 2008, under the careful guidance and support of the city and district agricultural machinery bureaus, Lu Xiuli founded the Xiuli Agricultural Machinery Service Cooperative and again purchased 6 high-speed rice transplanters. In 2009, in order to expand the scope of agricultural machinery services, Lu Xiuli successively purchased large tractors, combine harvesters, and other agricultural machinery, providing farmers with a "one-stop" service from wheat harvesting, straw returning to the field, land plowing and preparation, rice seed purchasing, and seedling raising to rice transplanting. Farmers were thus freed from inefficient and arduous labor, and the problem of unstable labor during the busy farming season was solved as well.

In 2011, due to a water shortage, farmers failed to irrigate in time, causing large areas of seedlings to die. The cooperative gave priority to farmers with the seedlings it had intended for its own use. Although the agricultural machinery department helped Lu Xiuli bring in seedlings from other places, due to timing, weather, transportation, and other reasons, the rice yield that season was very low, and Lu Xiuli lost more than 700,000 yuan. Even after encountering such a setback, Lu Xiuli still never gave up on the path of agricultural mechanization.

With the help of the city agricultural machinery bureau, in 2012 she and her husband Shen Chao attended the citywide agricultural machinery cooperative manager training, applying advanced management concepts and innovative operating models of agricultural machinery cooperatives to the cooperative's own development, and expanded their business from Wangguanji Township to other townships in our city and even to other provinces. Every summer during the harvest and planting season, the machinery teams of Xiuli Agricultural Machinery Service Cooperative could always be seen in Sihong, Sucheng, Shuyang, and other places, and they also left their footprints in Panjin City, Liaoning Province. The "one-stop" service left customers full of praise.

Today, Xiuli Agricultural Machinery Service Cooperative has 130 members, more than 2,000 mu of land, and more than 150 pieces of agricultural machinery, including combine harvesters, rice transplanters, large and medium-sized tractors, straw returning machines, rotary tillers, and high-efficiency plant protection machines, a machinery shed and warehouse of 960 square meters, fixed assets of more than 9 million yuan, and working capital of more than 1.3 million yuan. Its services have grown from machine rice transplanting alone to crop harvesting, straw returning to the field, land plowing and preparation, machine drilling of wheat, specialized prevention and control of crop diseases and pests, and protected melon and vegetable cultivation. Year-round, it provides mechanized plowing, planting, harvesting, machine rice transplanting, and specialized pest and disease control services for 20,000 mu of surrounding farmland, and is deeply praised by farmers. In the past 3 years, Xiuli Agricultural Machinery Service Cooperative has also been rated as one of the top ten agricultural machinery cooperatives by the city and district, becoming a shining star among the more than 500 agricultural machinery service cooperatives in our city.