New farmer Wu Di: An urban youth mastering modern agriculture

These days, inside the "LOHAS Nature Park" in Shizhangzhuang Village, Jiangzuo Town, Luoyang City, Henan Province, strawberries in the greenhouse are growing vigorously. In another month, they will be ready for market.

In 2009, Wu Di and Zhang Yang, who had ended their "Beijing drifters" life, returned to their hometown and founded the "LOHAS Nature Park." They use agricultural IoT technology to grow fruit, manage a 500-mu orchard, and market products through the internet. This year's revenue is close to 10 million yuan. Currently, they are trying to turn this ordinary farm into a "rural makerspace" to help surrounding villagers master modern "cool agriculture."

From "greenhorns" six years ago who knew nothing about technology and lacked funds, to now the "lead geese" of local rural entrepreneurial youth, Wu Di admits that on their entrepreneurial journey, their success would not have been possible without the local Communist Youth League organization, this "big backer" serving youth entrepreneurship.

At the start: "Two years of digging pits to bury watermelons"

Born in 1986, Wu Di was the only child in his family. He grew up in Luoyang City and attended university in Beijing.

Wu Di said that during his sophomore year, he already had the idea of starting a business. However, because there was no good opportunity, even by the time he graduated from university in 2009, he still had not found a good entrepreneurial project. After several months as a "Beijing drifter," Wu Di decided to return to Luoyang to look for opportunities.

On one visit home, Wu Di passed by an enterprise training center near his home and learned that the Luoyang Municipal Committee of the Communist Youth League was going to organize entrepreneurship training there, so he signed up. The 3-day training was not long, but the successful entrepreneurship cases and the instructors' encouragement reignited his entrepreneurial dream.

"When the watermelons ripened that year, I heard from a friend that watermelons from a place in Mengjin County, Luoyang, were especially sweet, 10 yuan per jin, and without booking in advance, you needed the village director's written approval to buy them." This made Wu Di's eyes light up, and he decided to "go big."

Wu Di found his old classmate Zhang Yang, who was also a "Beijing drifter," and the two hit it off immediately. When choosing a site, they took a fancy to a farm in Yichuan County, Luoyang City that had originally grown Chinese medicinal herbs. It not only had greenhouses, but also a pig farm nearby, so fertilizer was not a worry.

In 2010, ignoring their families' opposition, the two big boys took 100,000 yuan they had saved and came to Jiangzuo Town, Yichuan County, renting 5 greenhouses. At the beginning of the venture, because they did not understand cultivation techniques or enterprise management, they ate and lived in the park every day and went into the greenhouses to work with the farmers they had hired.

Although they "watched over" the park every day, by the time the watermelons ripened in May of that year, they watched others' watermelons go on the market while theirs were still unripe. In the end, because of technical problems, all the unripe watermelons from the 5 greenhouses were secretly buried by the two of them in pits.

"For a first attempt, failure is normal. It's just a technical problem, right? Learn the techniques and start over." Wu Di said the two found the locally renowned agronomist Sun Xiaofeng to serve as the farm's technical director, and borrowed money from all sides to raise 800,000 yuan, contracting all 40 greenhouses in the park and planting them with watermelons.

Because they had failed in the first year, local villagers no longer trusted them. When they needed workers, they could not recruit any. In this predicament, Wu Di once again thought of asking the Communist Youth League organization for help. With the assistance of the local Communist Youth League committee, the watermelons were successfully planted.

In May 2011, the watermelons in the 40 greenhouses had a bumper harvest. But the watermelons in all 40 greenhouses were planted uniformly and ripened uniformly, and had to be sold entirely within one week. This worried the two of them terribly.

Distributing flyers, asking people to taste, giving them away for free - although they made many efforts, they could only watch batch after batch of watermelons rot in the fields. Some that could not be disposed of had to be buried in pits again under cover of night.

"Two years, two pits, and we buried ourselves." Wu Di said that after the second year's failure, they had a big argument.

Rallying again to build "smart agriculture"

"If we disband, each of us will carry debts of several hundred thousand yuan. Relying on working odd jobs to repay the debt alone would take 20 years. Others start from zero, but we start from negative numbers." Wu Di found Zhang Yang for a heart-to-heart talk and urged him to "take one more gamble."

In 2012, they used the planting interval. As soon as the watermelons were planted, they began going out to find customers, and the customers they had given free watermelons to the year before also became repeat customers. That year, the high-quality watermelons from the 40 greenhouses sold for nearly 2 million yuan, and they successfully staged a comeback.

After planting watermelons in the first half of the year, the greenhouses would then sit idle. What to do? Wu Di decided to trial-plant premium Japanese strawberries. This time, before the strawberries even ripened, he began marketing them in advance, using Weibo, which young people loved.

At the beginning of 2013, through Weibo alone, he signed more than 800 orders and took in over 40,000 yuan. "At this point I felt I was no longer a farmer, but an e-commerce operator." Wu Di said. Later, he also opened a fruit online store on Taobao.

After harvesting the strawberries, when they planted watermelons again, many local people came to the park to pick them, and sales rose sharply.

"Nowadays, when people choose food, what they value most is green and healthy. If we make fruit into a brand, we naturally won't worry about sales." Wu Di said. Following this idea, in 2013 he expanded the park area to 500 mu, introduced Korean yellow pears and Tunisian soft-seed pomegranates, founded the "LOHAS Nature Park Chain Farm," and organically combined online sales with offline experiences.

The ideas were creative, but funding remained a weak point. Through the efforts of the Luoyang Municipal Committee of the Communist Youth League, the Henan Provincial Committee of the Communist Youth League secured a 2.3 million yuan interest-free loan for Wu Di. Departments such as the Luoyang Municipal Development and Reform Commission and the Agricultural Machinery Bureau also provided funding support or subsidies respectively. From then on, Wu Di's farm entered the fast lane of development.

Having studied computer science, Wu Di deeply understood the importance of IoT technology in standardized agricultural cultivation. In the past two years, they invested more than 2 million yuan to build the "Smart Agriculture 4.0" system.

According to Wu Di, the greenhouses are entirely automated. Two instruments in the nursery are used to detect air humidity, soil temperature and humidity, carbon dioxide concentration, and plant metabolic capacity. They collect data inside the greenhouse every 10 seconds and upload it to a server for back-end data analysis.

Now, Wu Di can control the entire farm through a single mobile phone.

Helping villagers master "cool agriculture"

Along the way, Wu Di deeply understood that only by sharing the fruits and opportunities of entrepreneurship with more people could his own entrepreneurial path go farther.

"When we first arrived, the villagers treated us as outsiders." Later, Wu Di subcontracted the greenhouses to local farmers to manage. Those who did well could contract more and earn more commission.

"Before, I only knew how to take care of children at home and play mahjong when free." Villager Li Taoxia is the head of the park's logistics department. "Now, with salary plus dividends, I can earn 60,000 to 70,000 yuan a year, and I can still take care of my family. Most importantly, now I'm working for myself."

In order to improve standardized cultivation techniques and reduce cultivation difficulty, "LOHAS Nature Park" uses the "Smart Agriculture 4.0" system to carry out production management and data analysis through internet technology, and uses IoT technology for production supervision and data collection. This guarantees standardized operational procedures in the agricultural production process, reduces the technical difficulty of production operations, and truly enables farmers to produce high-quality fruits and vegetables with "zero technical skill."

"Our management team is only responsible for incubation work. After things gradually take shape, we gradually withdraw and then go support the next farm." According to Wu Di, "LOHAS Nature Park" has already signed draft agreements with 6 local farms, initially reaching cooperation intentions, and will provide them with technical training and services next year.

With the help of the Luoyang Municipal Committee of the Communist Youth League's "E-commerce Training into Rural Areas" activity, "LOHAS Nature Park" opened rural e-commerce training courses to help more farmers understand the internet and provide broad development space for many left-behind women and returning youth.

In August this year, the Luoyang Municipal Committee of the Communist Youth League established a "rural makerspace" relying on "LOHAS Nature Park," turning ordinary farmers into managers and technicians, and ultimately into farm owners, developing them into "new farmers."