The Grain-Growing Story of Grain-Growing King Chu Changge

    From small-scale ventures on 1 hectare of land to showing his prowess on more than 120 hectares, and then to founding a corn-growing economic cooperative... Chu Changge, a farmer from Shichang Village, Kai'an Town, Nong'an County, Changchun City, has performed a splendid "trilogy" of land transfer on the black soil. It was precisely by concentrating contiguous plots of land in his hands that Chu Changge blazed a path to increased grain-growing income through large-scale operation, and for this he became the renowned "Grain-Growing King" of Changchun City. 

Shichang Village has many people and little land, with per capita arable land of only 0.2 hectares. The dominant crop in the fields is corn, and the farmers' lives were quite tight. At that time, Chu Changge's family of 5 had only a little over 1 hectare of land, and relying on this alone, they could not even solve the problem of food and clothing, so Chu Changge was determined to change this situation. He believed that the land in Shichang Village was suitable for growing corn, and that if farmers wanted to get rich, they still had to rely on growing grain. But the grain growing Chu Changge had in mind was not small-scale tinkering; it was the realization of large-scale production. Just as Chu Changge became "restless," the Kai'an Town government posted a notice for the public auction of 113 hectares of land, which made Chu Changge feel that his opportunity had come. Through borrowing money and taking out loans, he scraped together a sum of money and successfully bid for the right to use this land. From then on, Chu Changge began "stirring things up" on this large expanse of black soil. 

Large-scale production gave Chu Changge a glimpse of the hope of increasing income through grain growing. The following spring, Chu Changge purchased high-quality corn varieties and staged a fine show of technology-based grain growing on 113 hectares of land. Through large-scale production and scientific planting, Chu Changge's 113 hectares set a high-yield record of 0.63 million kg of corn per unit area. Last year, Chu Changge, who had tasted the sweetness of large-scale production, was no longer satisfied, and he leased nearly 10 hectares of land from farmers who had long worked away from home at the highest local price, expanding his corn planting area to more than 120 hectares. "With the scale of land guaranteed, growing improved varieties, soil testing and formulated fertilization, and mechanized farming are no longer a problem!" Chu Changge told reporters that by continuously unifying excellent corn varieties and increasing the technological content of corn planting, last year's total corn output on more than 120 hectares of land reached 1,531.8 tons, and he made a profit of 650,000 yuan from grain growing. 

This year, Chu Changge also established a corn-growing economic cooperative and set up a corn-growing economic zone. Chu Changge serves as the head of the cooperative, which has absorbed large grain-growing households from the village and some scientific and technological talent. The cooperative's main task is to drive farmers in the whole village and even the whole town to develop technology-based, large-scale, and mechanized corn production, thereby improving land use efficiency and operating benefits and promoting the rational flow of production factors such as land and labor.