The good earth
Veteran farmer Chen Sufen started with just one second-hand tractor and now owns a fleet of almost 200 tractors. Her company plants about half of the 400 square kilometers of cultivated land in Liaozhong County, of Liaoning Province. |
Decades ago, however, Chen and her husband Yu Huihuai had to sweat and toil daily on a 20,000-square-meter plot of land. The couple supplemented their income with a variety of side jobs, including making beancurd (or tofu). Now, thanks to agricultural mechanization, the husband and wife team handle a much wider field.
Starting with a loan that enabled them to buy a second-hand tractor in 1986, the couple have built up an operation that now boasts a staff of 100 people and nearly 200 tractors, as well as combine harvesters and other agricultural machines.
That first tractor opened their eyes to the enormous potential. It used to take the couple a whole day to plant less than 10,000 square meters of land, Chen said. "But our first iron cow could plant 200 to 300 mu (133,000 to 200,000 square meters) a day."
With their own land allotment handled quickly during the sowing and harvesting seasons, they began providing services for other villagers. Chen, who prides herself on her honesty and fairness, said they won over more and more customers by charging low prices for high performance.
"They are very considerate, and we believe them," said Wang Yu, a fellow villager.
The business flourished, and, within three years, they had expanded by acquiring all the competing companies in and around their village.
By 1992, their firm was the largest in the county, with some 120 machines, and was planting 20 square kilometers of land for thousands of local farmers.
Last year, Chen invested 4 million yuan ($517,000) in more machinery and named their business the Liaoning Huihuai Agro-mechanics Service Company.
"Time is gold. Any delay in spring will cause big losses in autumn," Chen told her drivers in her office.
Set in the classroom of a former primary school, which moved to a better location, the office is furnished with just a desk and a chair, along with a big blackboard. Bright red tractors are lined up in the playground outside her office.
Chen attributes their success to both luck and hard work. They failed once at a transportation business and had gone back to full-time farming.
When Chen and Yu married in 1980, her parents-in-law helped them with two bowls and 35 kilograms of broomcorn, a kind of sorghum used for making brooms. "No kidding," Chen recalled with a smile. Those provisions lasted the newlyweds a month.
Today, Chen dresses fashionably and can afford Lancome perfume, but her farmwife experience remains visible in her swarthy skin and hands as rough as sandpaper.
Chen's reputation has spread far beyond her own county and even beyond the province. In 2005, her voluminous contributions to grain production earned her an award as one of the nation's top farmers.
Yet she is modest about her achievements, maintaining that at heart she remains just a farmer. "With all the gadgets and things that are great for industry, we're still people who live off the land," Chen said. "We're part of the land."
Others assign them somewhat higher standing, however. "Chen is more important than our county chief now," says villager Zhang Min, half-joking. "Without the chief we can still live and work. But without Chen, we have no rice to eat!"
"I know nothing about success," insisted Chen. "I dreamed it, and I do it; that's all."
Considering China's rural population is 790 million, and there is just more than 1,000 square meters of cultivated land per person, Chen's workload amounts to a mind-boggling 6,000 times the average.
If you start out from the middle of the property and walk for a day, you still won't reach the edge, Chen noted.
As the richest farmer in Liaozhong County, Chen pays great attention to her fellow villagers.
Every Spring Festival, she sends pork and rice to all disadvantaged people in the village. Last year, they helped pay the tuition fee for a neighbor's daughter. Chen promised to pay all her four-year cost in university.
"I just cannot bear seeing the miserable people and doing nothing to help them," said Chen.
Mechanization of farmwork has had at least three positive effects on people's lives and livelihood, according to Qu Ping, vice director of Liaoning Province's agricultural mechanization bureau.
First, machines make for faster and easier land cultivation and transport of products. Second, the services go beyond a single household to help large numbers of farmers. Finally, mechanization leads to increased family incomes.
"Chen is an example of someone who not only has made her own fortune but also has helped other local farmers improve efficiency," Qu said.
Ultimately, he said, rural mechanization will lead to an increase in part-time farmers earning more from urban jobs.
But 60 percent of Chinese still depend on farming for a living, and China's agriculture overall hinges largely on the productivity of many small-scale farmers providing the bulk of the staple food.
"There is still a long way to go until traditional family farms are replaced by big, highly productive factory farms," Qu said.
Meanwhile, Chen continues to dream, and hopes to develop her company into a brand-name grain and vegetable supplier for supermarkets around the nation.
But she has some worries about the future. She and her husband Yu are approaching 60. Her daughter Yu Dan, 28, moved to Shenyang for business. She doesn't want to return to the countryside where, she says, "there is no KTV, no Mcdonald's nothing".
With reluctance, Yu Dan quit her job and moved back to help her mother, but she expects to return to the city soon.
Chen, nevertheless, remains philosophical. She, at least, will stay on.
"I have farmed all my life," she said. "The land will never cheat you if you treat it fairly and in a timely manner."
(China Daily 04/24/2007 page20)
