Major Grain Farmer Ge Haoxin: A Story of Cultivation in the Fields

    On a drying yard 16 m wide and 2000 m long, Ge Haoxin's wheat was hauled in cart after cart and spread out to the full. The farmers spreading the wheat for Ge Haoxin exclaimed: "The big farmer Ge's wheat is golden wheat, plump and round, and no matter how much you haul, it never runs out." Hauling it in to spread and dry, then hauling it away to the granary, takes a full week. Holding the golden wheat in his hands, Ge Haoxin's heartfelt smile and pride were written on his face: "If all my wheat were spread on this drying yard, it would pile up almost as tall as a person." This year, the more than 10,000 mu of wheat he contracted enjoyed a bumper harvest. The average yield per unit reached 575 kg.

    Ge Haoxin, a major grain farmer in Yingzhou District, Fuyang City, Anhui Province, began legally transferring and contracting farmers' cultivated land in 1998. By the autumn of 2008, he had contracted a total of 10079.4 mu of farmers' cultivated land with full authority, and also contracted more than 1300 mu of high-yield public wheat fields on a technical basis, contracting a total of 23079.4 mu of farmers' cultivated land in different forms. He was the only person from Anhui Province among the 20 national model grain production major farmers commended by the Ministry of Agriculture in 2008. Starting from last year's autumn sowing, Ge Haoxin sowed strictly in accordance with scientifically matched good seed and good methods. In the past winter and this spring, Fuyang City suffered a drought once in 50 years. Ge Haoxin spared no effort in fighting the drought and protecting the seedlings, irrigating with root-establishing water and jointing water, and, relying on experience accumulated over many years, guided farmers to strengthen field management, carry out "one spray, three preventions," and apply fertilizer and weed in time.

In March, when Han Ping, a reporter from Fuyang TV, interviewed Ge Haoxin, he asked Ge Haoxin how much he expected the yield to drop this year. Ge Haoxin replied: "If water and fertilizer keep up, this year there will not only be no reduction in yield, but it will exceed the usual yield level." Han Ping did not believe it and thought the big farmer Ge was bragging: provincial and municipal agricultural experts all predicted that this year's wheat yield would drop by about 20%, so was Ge such a big shot? On June 3, before the harvest, in front of the reporter's camera, Li Pingfang, a senior agronomist in our city, conducted the final yield measurement in Ge Haoxin's high-yield research field, and the figure was 626 kg per unit, a 27% increase over last year. Now the reporter was convinced: "The big farmer Ge really is something!" Ge Haoxin did the math for us: after deducting drought-fighting and other costs, last year his wheat yield per unit was 472.5 kg. If this year's 10,000 mu of wheat is calculated at an increase of 100 jin per mu, the net increase in income would be nearly one million yuan. However, according to the experts, Ge Haoxin was still being conservative.

Speaking of this year's bumper harvest, Ge Haoxin was very grateful to the local government. Last year, on the basis of giving Ge Haoxin various national preferential agricultural policies, the Yingzhou District government invested 900,000 yuan to carry out farmland water conservancy infrastructure construction for the big farmer Ge's high-yield public wheat fields. When a continuous drought occurred in winter and spring, the Yingzhou District government supported the big farmer Ge with 57,000 yuan in drought-fighting funds, 26 sets of sprinkler irrigation equipment, 6 sets of mobile large pumps, and 120 tons of low-priced drought-fighting and disaster-relief chemical fertilizer. Ge Haoxin became a successful model for Yingzhou District's exploration of rural land transfer, advancing from individual scattered contracting toward intensive, industrialized agriculture. The big farmer Ge, having become prosperous, did not forget his neighbors. He often used CDs, radio, training classes, science and technology mobile service vehicles and other forms to actively lead the surrounding people in scientific farming, making an economic contribution to raising the quality and yield of wheat throughout the city and to the development of the local rural economy.