Post-80s Returnee Li Dayong: Learning Technology, Creating a Brand, and Leading the Cooperative to Prosperity

In Lü'er Village, Lüyang Town, Beizhen City, Liaoning Province, "post-80s" young man Li Dayong is quite well-known. He studied in Japan but returned to his hometown to start a business; young as he is, he serves as the chairman of a cooperative and a new-type professional farmer. With what he has learned, he has led the people of his hometown onto a fast track to prosperity.

Li Dayong was born in 1982. His father Li Kai was a veteran agricultural technology extension worker who established a farmers' professional cooperative. To let his son learn advanced foreign agricultural models, after graduating from high school Li Dayong applied to the Department of Regional Environmental Science in the Faculty of Agriculture and Life Science at Hirosaki University, a national university in Japan, to study regional environmental management. Upon graduating from university, he resolutely gave up the opportunity to work in Japan and in 2011 returned to the farmers' cooperative economic organization where his father worked - the Beizhen City Li Kai Fruit and Vegetable Planting Professional Cooperative - to directly participate in production, operations and organizational work.

At that time, the cooperative mainly produced seasonal vegetables to supply the market, following market prices, without forming a brand, with low market competitiveness, and agricultural products were often unsalable. Li Dayong suggested that members produce green food vegetables, strictly following the green food vegetable production operating procedures formulated by the cooperative, and at the same time actively carried out certification for 15 green food vegetables, created the "Wulü" green food vegetable brand, and signed an agreement with the Shenyang Dadong Non-staple Food Group, realizing direct farm-to-supermarket connection.

In order to give play to the cooperative's demonstration and leading role and help many members achieve prosperity through science and technology, Li Dayong also actively solved the pre-production seedling problem for farmers. Lüyang Town is located in the Daling River basin and has a tradition of growing watermelons. In the past, crop rotation was mostly used to solve the soil-borne disease problem in watermelon production, but in recent years land rotation has encountered a bottleneck, reaching the point where there is no land left to plant. To solve the soil-borne disease problem, Li Dayong and his father went together to Shandong Weili Seedling and several other seedling enterprises to inspect and learn about intensive seedling production. After returning, they introduced the grafted technique of watermelon splice grafting, continuously innovated, and based on the physiological characteristics of watermelon and rootstock, adopted the double-cut-root splice grafting technique. With this technique, not only was the survival rate of seedlings improved, with seedlings showing fast recovery, about 10 days earlier maturity, and more than 20% increase in fruit yield, but stress resistance was also strong, significantly increasing farmers' income.

Li Dayong's cooperative, besides solving problems in agricultural production for its members, also provides free technical services to farmers in surrounding provinces and cities. Once, several farmers in Jintun Village, Linghai City, a neighboring area, had greenhouse-grown tomatoes that failed to sprout or suffered seedling burn. Upon hearing the news, Li Dayong personally drove to the site to investigate the cause. Through observation and asking the farmers about their fertilization practices, he diagnosed it as excessive long-term application of undecomposed farmyard manure (chicken manure), causing excessive accumulation of organic acids in the soil, which led to seed and sprout rot. For this reason, he suggested that several farmers should best apply raw chicken manure only after it is fully decomposed. For the seedling burn phenomenon, large amounts of water could be used to flush the toxic source deeper into the soil. He explained the causes to the farmers in a practical way and told them the solutions. His serious and responsible spirit moved the farmers.

Although he returned from studying in Japan, Li Dayong also attached great importance to improving his own agricultural management level. He consulted experts and was not ashamed to ask questions, and participated in relevant business training held by the Liaoning Provincial Rural Economic Commission, the Provincial Seed Management Bureau and the China Green Food Development Center, successively obtaining qualifications as a sampling inspector, field inspector and green food enterprise internal inspector, making himself a well-rounded professional farmer. "Agriculture needs new knowledge, new technologies and new ideas. I will keep learning and working hard to do a better job with our fruit and vegetable planting professional cooperative and make greater contributions to leading farmers to prosperity," Li Dayong said when asked about his next plans.