Machines make light work of reaping rice

During the harvest season in late July, one of the drivers operating the agricultural machinery stood out from all the others hard at work in the rice fields of Mayang Miao autonomous county in Hunan province.

Known by local residents as the "Queen of agricultural machines", 37-year-old Lu Xiaolan so expertly manipulated the joystick, harvesting swathes of rice from the paddy field, that it's hard to believe she wasn't involved in the agricultural sector until a decade ago.

Back in 2012, Lu was working as a human resource manager at electronics manufacturer Foxconn in Dongguan, Guangdong province, where she was earning 100,000 yuan ($14,489) a year.

When she returned to her hometown in Mayang for the Spring Festival, she noticed a large area of fallow land and felt that it was a wasted opportunity, as the climate in the county is suited to growing a variety of crops. "However, the shortage of professional farmers and laborers resulted in the uneven quality of agricultural produce, and a failure to make the best use of the area's good natural conditions," Lu said.

Going against the wishes of her parents-in-law, Lu decided to give up her high-paid job to start a new agricultural venture in her hometown.

With a degree in programming, she knew little about farming and encountered great difficulties when she first began to grow rice. To develop her knowledge, she attended training sessions at the Hunan Agricultural University and read up on agricultural techniques.

"I realized that we needed to change the traditional way of farming to pursue mechanized and technological methods," Lu said.

Prior to 2013, no large rice planting areas in Mayang were mechanized. "The rice here was harvested using machines hired from elsewhere, which was expensive and inconvenient," Lu said.

Inspired, she established an agricultural cooperative in 2017, which provided help to farmers who grew rice and oranges. The cooperative purchased 168 agricultural machines such as cultivators, plant protection drones, and harvesters to work on the 254 hectares under its control in the county. With machinery worth 4 million yuan, the "queen" had to bear the full weight of her crown. At first, Lu tended to scratch or even break the machines, mistakes costing her a loss of upward 100,000 yuan, but after years of continual use, she now excels as a skilled operator and her fellow villagers have become heavily involved in her venture.

Since 2019, the cooperative has trained 30 local farmers in the use of heavy machinery and has hired 200 seasonal employees to help villagers with a range of services from planting to sales. It organizes training on the use of agricultural machinery and scientific planting sessions free of charge each year, in which about 2,000 people have participated. Many later go on to establish their own work teams.

Lu said that the production value of the cooperative's management services has reached 6 million yuan. Famers feel confident entrusting their land to the cooperative, which manages the farm work and sells the produce more efficiently and at a lower cost.

Last year, it purchased a million agricultural products from 107 households that have recently emerged from poverty, and paid 650,000 yuan to 47 seasonal workers, Lu said. "We no longer need cattle to plow farmland. Farmers are freed from bending over to transplant rice seedlings and using a sickle to harvest rice thanks to the cooperative," villager Tang Xiuyi said.

An agricultural machine can harvest ten times more grain than Tang's family of five were able to harvest in a day. "The mechanization of the entire process has allowed us to relax," Tang said.

Lu plans to expand the domestic market of the cooperative and invest in research into agricultural products. "Villagers once admired the urban life. But I expect that the energy of the countryside will someday become something urban residents admire," she said.

Zhu Youfang contributed to this story.