Overseas graduate devotes to agriculture

Ding Dan, who graduated from the University of Liverpool with a master's degree, returned to his hometown of Xi'an in 2016 to start a business, promote mechanized rice planting and lead more villagers on the road to prosperity, People's Daily reported on Wednesday.

"You are studying consumer marketing, and you don't have to worry about finding a job in a big city. Why did you come back to work in this lucrative and hard-working farm town?" His mother Wang Xiuping was puzzled, but Ding had already made up his mind. But the mother has an ultimatum: He must go to the big city for a job first, and then return to his hometown after working in a modern enterprise there for a few years.

Ding came to Shanghai and worked in a large advertising media company to clarify the market positioning of products and formulate corresponding marketing plans for large enterprises. This job gave him the opportunity to contact consumers at different levels, and also accumulated experience for him to launch more and different types of products for market segments in the future.

At the end of 2017, Ding completed the agreement with his mother to "work for two years" and returned to Shinao town, Gao'an city. However, it didn't take long for the reality to pour cold water. In the first year, the weather was bad, and Ding Dan being inexperienced didn't make much money growing grain; after a year, Ding rented a lot of land from the villagers, all of which was used for growing grain, but in the second half of the year, there was another drought.

Nowadays, as the development of science and technology has changed the agricultural business, it is still necessary to be prepared for high risks and low returns to start a business in the agricultural field. It is not enough to just have passion, but one also needs knowledge of proper technology.

"Modern agriculture must be efficient agriculture, which is inseparable from mechanization, intelligence and information," Ding Dan firmly believed.

In 2019, he built a 1,000-square-meter glass greenhouse and a 2,300-square-meter multi-building greenhouse in the base, and introduced a fully automated seeding assembly line to promote germination, seedling and sowing in a unified manner through the seedling cultivation model.

Previously, Ding did not have much operational experience in agricultural modernization in the local area for reference. It was up to him to lead the team to explore while exploring. Ding ran around to recruit talents and formed a team of young people. With a capable general, Ding's determination to "grow good food" became even stronger. He introduced a smart agricultural system when planting selenium-enriched rice. Consumers can trace the source of the system and understand the whole process of rice planting. In addition, thanks to the smart system, the standardization of farmers' work has been further improved, the use of pesticides and fertilizers reduced, and the rice is greener and healthier.

According to Ding, the hired farmers not only have a guaranteed minimum salary, but also can receive dividends at the end of the year, so as to fully protect the interests of farmers.

From 2017 to now, Ding's team has rented some 10,000 mu (667 hectares) of farmland. To manage such large area of farmland efficiently, Ding launched the three-level "Tianguanjia" model in 2018: from top cooperative, zongguanjia (region manager) to xiaoguanjia (section manager). Ding paid the farmers monthly wages. The zongguanjia and the company accounted for half of the autumn grain profits, and the xiaoguanjia was given appropriate rewards based on the benefits of the base he was responsible for.

"The biggest feature of the 'Tianguanjia' model is profit". Ding introduced that the company does not rely on growing grain to make money, but mainly focuses its profits on grain processing and sales.

"Tianguanjia" makes more profits and is willing to devote himself to it, so as to better improve the output and quality of rice, Ding has more time to withdraw from the fields to plan the company's grain processing and sales direction.