National Grain-Growing Model Worker Yan Shimin's Grain-Growing Experience
From a poor farmer to the chairman of a large company with 80 million yuan in fixed assets, Yan Shimin's 47 years of life have been full of legendary color. On the stark white saline-alkali land of his hometown, Yan Shimin, through scientific farming and breeding improved seed varieties, led his fellow villagers onto the road of common prosperity.
Yan Shimin (file photo, source: Liangyuan Net)
Leafing through Yan Shimin's records, we see one dazzling halo after another: China Outstanding Youth Spark Leader, China Township Entrepreneur, Ministry of Agriculture Large-Scale Grain Grower, Provincial Outstanding Contribution Talent, Provincial Top Ten Outstanding Youth Spark Leader, Provincial Excellent Senior Talent, Provincial Advanced Science and Technology Worker, Municipal Top Ten Private Entrepreneurs, Municipal Top Ten Outstanding Youth, Municipal May 1 Labor Medal Winner, Shangqiu City Olympic Torchbearer... Behind these honors lie sacrifices beyond those of ordinary people and unswerving struggle.
In 1961, Yan Shimin was born in Pantang Village, Lizhuang Township, Liangyuan District. 60% of Pantang Village's land was saline-alkali land, called by the villagers "ghost-edge land." From childhood, Yan Shimin developed a strong interest in growing crops, often planting melons and beans in the fields. Later, when experts from the Shangqiu City Agricultural Science Institute were breeding corn seed in Pantang Village, he seized the opportunity to get close to the experts, asking them about this and that. The production team sent him out for training, and so Yan Shimin became the production team's agricultural technician.
After land was contracted to households, Yan Shimin figured out how to grow cotton on the saline-alkali land, raising the original yield of less than 5 kg of lint cotton per mu to 52 kg. With livestock breeding added, he became the first household in the entire township to earn ten thousand yuan from planting and ten thousand yuan from breeding.
In 1982, Yan Shimin, having tasted the sweetness of getting rich through science and technology, went to the Municipal Agricultural Science Institute to take corn expert Zhou Kezhong and wheat expert Wang Xuewen as his teachers. While conducting experimental research at the Agricultural Science Institute, he also led farmers in the village in breeding and propagating seed. To learn more knowledge, he used 100,000 yuan that his family had saved by skimping on food and clothing to visit and seek advice from experts and professors at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, China Agricultural University, Henan Agricultural University and elsewhere, successively introducing new varieties such as "Lumai No. 1," increasing wheat income by 30%-50%. In 1983, he cooperated with expert Zhou Kezhong to breed the medium-to-high-yield corn variety "Yuyu No. 1." This improved variety was promoted throughout the province in 1985 and later won the third prize of the Henan Provincial Science and Technology Achievement Award.
In order to turn scientific and technological achievements into productive forces and lead his fellow villagers to prosperity together, Yan Shimin organized the villagers to join the ranks of seed breeding, and provided free plowing, sowing and watering for the villagers. At the same time, he merged the 117 mu of land of 8 households of his own brothers, 39 people in total, into one plot as an experimental field. Starting in 1982, Yan Shimin introduced more than 140 new wheat varieties (lines), more than 60 new vegetable varieties including tomato, pepper, eggplant, zucchini and celery, 30 new cotton varieties, as well as new varieties of sorghum, rice and soybean, turning the formerly barren land into fine fields one after another. The city and district held observation meetings and exchange meetings in Pantang Village many times to promote the village's experience.
In May 1999, in order to attract more talent to the countryside to do scientific research, he invested 3.8 million yuan to build Yanzhuang Science and Technology New Village. The new village has a building area of 4,653 sq m, divided into an office area, a living area and a residential area. The villagers are paid according to work, with unified housing and unified work clothing. Everyone lives in harmony, respecting and loving one another, yielding and forgiving one another, each fulfilling their duties and each taking responsibility. Yanzhuang Science and Technology New Village has become a beautiful scenery line in the construction of a new socialist countryside.
Scientific and technological innovation knows no end. Starting in the 1990s, Yan Shimin successively founded the Shangqiu City Crop New Variety Promotion Station, the Shangqiu City Crop New Variety Research Institute, and the Shangqiu Sub-center of the Henan Provincial Crop New Variety Experiment and Exhibition Center. On this basis, Henan Huahui Seed Industry Co., Ltd. was established. The company has a building area of more than 9,000 sq m and is a private enterprise of agricultural science and technology industrialization integrating scientific research and processing. The company is currently carrying out a series of scientific and technological innovation projects, involving bio-technology engineering, seed technology engineering and others.
Science and technology lead to the road of prosperity, and even saline-alkali land yields gold. According to incomplete statistics, since 2001, Yan Shimin has held 25 training sessions for scientific and technological personnel and more than 30 science and technology lectures, training 18,000 people, breeding and promoting 16,000 kg of new crop varieties over a promotion area of more than 8.5 million mu, enabling farmers to increase their output of grain, cotton, oil crops, vegetables and fruit by 390 million kg and increase their income by more than 900 million yuan, benefiting more than 48,000 farming households.