One of the many new homes in Zhaizi Village. Photos by Guowen

In early 1998, I opened a agricultural store and named it Zhaizi Science and Technology Center. Today it has grown into a chain of stores. In the beginning, I found that many farmers who came to my shop to buy fertilizers had no idea how much of which kind they needed and just followed others blindly.

To help those farmers and make my store true to its name, I invited agricultural technicians to give lectures and guidance to farmers around the area. In December 1998, I invited a professor from Northwest Agriculture and Forestry University and another from Yuncheng Agricultural College as my guest speakers, with the help of a fertilizer factory manager. The lecture was planned for 80 people, but more than 400 people turned up. I was greatly encouraged and the training has since continued as a long-term project. It has now become Puzhou Town School of Agricultural Technology registered with the Yongji City Education Bureau. The training program and my store occupied almost all of my time, so I left my work at the school in 1999.

Most of the villager students were women, as their husbands and grown-up sons had gone off to seek jobs in cities. Even when technicians told them what they should do, they still lacked confidence to make decisions without first consulting the authority of their family. In order to help them build confidence and enrich their lives, I started to organize outdoor dancing in 2001. After a month about 70 percent of the women in my village had joined in. During a folklore festival sponsored by the municipal government in 2002, I organized over 1,000 women from more than 10 villages to perform Yangge, a popular rural folk dance in China.

Besides dancing, I also organized other activities, such as debates, to give the women an opportunity to discuss various issues and learn from one another. The topics of debates were closely related to their lives, such as mother-in-law and daughter-in-law relationships and foot health – high heels vs. flats. Those activities indeed strengthened women’s initiative and greatly enhanced their confidence. They started to think about what they could do, and in 2004 we had our first cooperative group for women’s handicrafts, such as papercutting and embroidery.

Meanwhile, we received financial, planning and technological support from the Women’s Federation, the Agricultural Bureau and Cultural Affairs Bureau of Yongji City.

After 2003, the men in my village started to participate in our activities. Besides joining in our cultural activities, they also cooperated and helped one another in growing trees, fruits and flowers. Their efforts brought about the establishment of the Organic Agriculture Cooperative and Youth Farm in 2005.

In June 2004, we first registered our organization as the Puzhou Peasants Association at Yongji City’s Bureau of Civil Affairs. After the Law of the People’s Republic of China on Specialized Farmers Cooperatives was promulgated in October 2006, we registered our organization as Puzhou Fruits Cooperative to make it a specialized farmers’ cooperative. We then registered many specialized farmers cooperatives. Our organization has gradually evolved from an organization for cultural activities to a comprehensive farmers’ association that features both economic cooperation and public service.

In December 2008, we made a 10-year development plan for our association. Over the past four years, we have steadily promoted its development. Our women’s cultural activities were originally designed for entertainment but now those activities have started to focus on family education. We have set up a service center to improve senior citizens’ lives, and have effectively combined the production, processing and marketing of our subsidiaries’ products.

Along the way we have encountered problems and failures and have learned lessons and gained experience. Between 2005 and 2007, 75 families in our village raised funds to establish a paint factory and 12 women jointly invested and ran a steamed bread shop. Unfortunately those businesses were not successful. We reviewed the failures and concluded that it was because we were weak in sales and marketing. Now we have two market analysis and development groups, one based in Yongji and the other in Yuncheng. Relying on relatives and friends of our villagers in cities and other regions, we have gradually opened up the market for our organic farm produce and sideline products.

In recent years, many farmers’ cooperatives from around the country have come to share their experience with us. Before coming they didn’t understand why we have many public service programs, as they feel that it is not cooperatives’ responsibility to provide public service. However, I think they overvalue the role of money in rural areas. Our 10 years of practice have strengthened our belief that the development of a peasants’ association will be unlimited if we look beyond economic cooperation.

Our development plan gives equal importance to public service and economic cooperation and allows them to be independent but complementary. Such an integration facilitates full utilization of rural resources to sustain the development of a peasants’ association.

This year we have divided our projects into three categories: public service projects whose profits can cover their expenditures, economic cooperation projects with small profit margins, and those with handsome margins such as the agricultural supermarket chain, organic agriculture cooperative and land-use right transfer center. We stipulate that 30 percent of the profits from the last category be handed over to the association to maintain its day-to-day operations and to invest in its sustainable development.

Many of our visitors are highly mechanized large-scale farming cooperatives from the North China Plain and southern areas. Their models are not workable in Puzhou, because Puzhou and Hanyang are sandwiched between the Zhongtiao Mountains to the east and the flood plain of the Yellow River to the west. The soil quality also varies a lot as the area is made up of a combination of mountain, plain and flood land.

Our largest piece of cropland is 800 mu (1 mu=1/15 hectare), a pool of 175 households. After repeated experiments under the guidance of experts, we have introduced several organic farming methods. For example, we interplant sesame with cotton as the smell of sesame can expel aphids. We have also installed high-voltage bug zappers on cropland and sell the killed bugs to farmers to feed chickens.

At present, most cadres of cooperatives under our association are around 50 years old. In 2018 when the current 10-year plan is fulfilled, young people will have to continue our work. Some of our middle-aged cadres have recruited their children who have graduated from agricultural colleges to serve the association. Since 2005 we have recruited 50 college graduates, only five of whom are from other regions.

From my point of view, cities are not necessarily best place for rural college graduates to start their careers. Their hometowns can offer them a broader stage. Once I declared three requirements of our young people: farm a plot, work in a farmers cooperative, and establish work relations with a village. I think this is where they should start if they want to make their lives in rural areas.

Years of hard work have made me realize that people are the center of every thing I do. Raise villagers’ initiative and enthusiasm, and you can achieve your goal.