The path to modernization for the floodplain farm

　　The former glory of the Panqu Farm has faded, but today's agricultural reclamation workers, like their parents, are fearless and forge ahead, tirelessly seeking a way out.

　　Panqu Farm has long been a place forgotten by administrative divisions; on the map, you hardly feel its existence, even though its hundreds of thousands of acres of land can hardly be considered a "small fry," and even though it once shone far brighter in the historical sky than its current social administrative location, Zhoukou City.

　　This was once an open world, encompassing all rivers and mountains, where people from all walks of life gathered from all over the country; it was also a closed kingdom, where people inside could not get out, and people outside could not or would not come in, with only a dwindling self-circulating system within the kingdom.

　　But no one wants to be forgotten. In fact, regardless of whether they are still a landscape in the eyes of others, or whether they can truly obtain positive energy from the outside, they have been tirelessly seeking a way out, after all, the blood of agricultural reclamation workers still flows in their veins—they are actually the same as their parents, equally passionate, equally courageous, and fearless of difficulties.

　　Agricultural modernization is a historical inevitability, and they suddenly realized that modern agriculture has always been around them, or that they are only one step away from agricultural modernization.

　　Blood-Red Agricultural Reclamation

　　If it weren't for the Yellow River bursting its banks, with its vast waters seizing the Huai River and flowing into the sea, turning a thousand li of fertile fields into a watery world, perhaps the central plains would never have seen an agricultural reclamation area covering hundreds of thousands of acres.

　　In June 1938, the Nationalist government hastily blew up the Yellow River embankment at Garden Mouth in Zhengzhou to prevent the Japanese invaders from invading westward. The flooding of the Yellow River lasted for eight years, and a "Yellow River flood area" of more than 54,000 square kilometers, filled with yellow sand, unexpectedly entered history.

　　After the Japanese surrender, in 1947, the Henan Relief Office of the Nationalist government successively established three reclamation teams to reclaim wasteland in Weishi, Fugou, and Xihua.

　　After the founding of the People's Republic of China, in February 1950, the Central Government established the "Yellow River Flood Area Revitalization Committee," and in the same year, it established an office in Kaifeng, then the provincial capital of Henan Province—the Revitalization Bureau, with Wu Zhipu, the then governor, serving as the director.

　　At that time, Xihua and Fugou were sparsely populated, and the villagers who had fled to the northwest had not yet returned home. In the "Yellow River flood area," wind and sand, reeds, and aquatic plants, as well as saline-alkali land prevailed; looking out, desolation was everywhere. To quickly restore production, the state allocated special funds and called on farmers to return home to work, stipulating that whoever reclaimed the wasteland would plant it and harvest it, and would not pay public grain for three years.

　　A stable political situation and favorable policies inspired the entrepreneurial enthusiasm of the people in the flood area. Thus, a large-scale movement to fight against nature, build homes, and benefit future generations, the reclamation area "revitalization" movement, flourished. Due to the concerted efforts and support from all sides, the revitalization work of the reclamation area achieved significant results in just one year. Premier Zhou Enlai expressed his approval and instructed the end of the revitalization work, collecting the land that the people in the reclamation area couldn't finish distributing to establish farms.

　　In January 1951, the Yellow River Flood Area Farm was officially established, directly under the Agricultural Reclamation Department of the Ministry of Agriculture. The farm director was Lu Yanling, the former deputy director of the Revitalization Bureau. In 1952, it was placed under the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry of the Central South Military and Political Committee, and in 1954, it became a provincial-level farm under the Henan Provincial Government.

　　Many of the first generation of land reclaimers were passionate young men. In the early days of the farm's establishment, under the call of the Party, they gathered from all directions. They were fearless of hardship, forging ahead, and devoted to the dream of building a new China.

　　The land reclaimers devoted all their wisdom and ingenuity to production practices, not only steadily increasing grain production but also completing many technological transformations in conjunction with production practices. The creation of the "crop straw shredding device" opened up a new path for returning straw to the fields to improve soil fertility and soil properties on a large scale, and was thus promoted nationwide. Animal husbandry focused on improved breeding, and cultivated the "Pan Nong Flower Pig" and "Light Pulling Horse," which won major science and technology awards in Henan. The "Pan Nong Flower Pig" has a high lean meat rate, and the "Light Pulling Horse" has a strong pulling force; both were rare superior livestock breeds at the time.

　　After the mid-1950s, the farm began diversified operations, focusing on agriculture and vigorously developing forestry, animal husbandry, and sideline production, implementing a two-level management system of the main farm and branch farms with unified accounting, and the economic situation improved. However, the subsequent "Great Leap Forward" and "Cultural Revolution" plunged the enterprise into chaos and severely reduced its efficiency.

　　After the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, the farm adjusted its production structure and improved its management. In 1979, with the approval of the Henan Provincial Committee, the farm piloted an agricultural, industrial, and commercial joint enterprise, expanding its autonomy, and its development momentum was rapid; that year, it earned 2.9 million yuan in profit, becoming a national advanced agricultural unit.

　　The farm's fruit trees formed forests, especially producing apples. In 1984, the total area of orchards in the farm was more than 20,700 mu, with an annual fruit output of 20 million catties, while nearby rural areas also developed tens of thousands of mu of orchards with the support of the farm in technology and fruit seedlings. The farm's annual pig inventory was around 10,000 heads, and the number of dairy cows reached 600, with an annual milk production of 3 million catties.

　　In addition to the cylinder liner factory and power plant, food industries directly related to the farm's agricultural product production also developed rapidly, including fruit wine, white wine, and blended wine; flour, oil pressing, dairy products, fruit cakes and pastries, sauces, pickles, and canned food; factories were numerous, and there were also phosphate fertilizer, printing, bricks and tiles, feed processing, packaging, weaving, and textile industries. There were nearly a thousand traders on the farm alone, so that a farmers' market arose around the farm as a center.

　　The farm also had a motor transport team that exchanged goods with the surrounding markets. In 1984, the farm had 248 motor vehicles, including 112 heavy-duty trucks, which were active on the transportation lines in Zhoukou, Zhengzhou, Xuchang, and Luoyang, playing an important role in the farm's various productions.

　　It can be said that it was a generation of agricultural reclamation workers, using diligence as a plow and youth as a ploughshare, who transformed the vast desert into an endless oasis. The boundless fields, lush orchards, "golden silk dates" and "candied fruit" sold overseas, the famous "fish skin peanuts," "white wine," and "hawthorn cake slices," the huge motor transport team and the group of wheeled tractors, all bear witness to their hard work, passion, and pride in taking the farm as their home.

　　Reform for Survival

　　By the 1980s, a second generation of agricultural reclamation workers emerged under the spring breeze of reform. With the blossoming of farm commerce, they plunged into the torrent of the market economy, but unfortunately, most ended in failure, leaving the reclamation workers overwhelmed with confusion and doubt.

　　Driven by poverty, they sought change. Bankruptcy restructuring, shareholding system reform, risk-pledge contracting, leasing, selling... they groped their way forward, painstakingly searching for suitable production and management models through continuous trial and error. It was their relentless pursuit and courageous breakthroughs that enabled the farm to achieve its current scale and form an agricultural industrialization system headed by Dishen Seed Industry, Lvyuan Chemical, Tianying Cylindr Liner, and Xinxin Animal Husbandry.

　　In 1983, the farm initiated agricultural system reforms, implementing land contracting operations and promoting family farms, forming a three-tiered management system of the main farm, branch farms, and family farms. The main farm unified accounting and bore overall profits and losses; branch farms had independent accounting and were responsible for their own profits and losses; family farms had separate accounting and were solely responsible for their own profits and losses. For employees who had always cherished the glory of "eating from the same big pot and receiving wages," this was undoubtedly an earthquake.

　　In 1985, the Panqu Farm established 1290 family farms. Their state-owned nature remained unchanged, worker status remained unchanged, children's recruitment and grading qualifications remained unchanged, and retirement benefits remained unchanged. Employees were required to pay cash or agricultural products to the branch farm annually, with any surplus income belonging to the individual. This reform greatly liberated and developed productivity, employee production enthusiasm soared, and agricultural production developed steadily.

　　However, by the end of 1997, when the second generation of agricultural reclamation workers "took over," the family farm system exposed many problems in management and profit distribution, such as long-term employee account arrears, unpaid dues, profit-only responsibility without loss responsibility, unreasonable distribution of operating results, increased branch farm burdens, and subsequent transfer to the main farm, resulting in insufficient financial resources and weak development of the main farm.

　　In 2002, the farm implemented a family farm land leasing system, where employees bid for land leases, with the highest bidder winning. Rent was paid in full before planting, with autonomous planting within the planned area, and rent prices adjusted according to agricultural product prices. The implementation of this measure enhanced employees' risk awareness and competitiveness. Everyone began to take their "one mu of land" seriously, resulting in a situation where they both complained and benefited; the farm also gained greater "financial power" due to increased land prices and rental income.

　　After 1985, the farm's commerce experienced several stages: from profit to loss, from public to private, from collective operation to bankruptcy restructuring, leasing, selling, risk-pledge, and shareholding system reform. In 1988, the farm's commerce was at its peak, but the following year, due to unreasonable structure, poor management, national credit tightening, and weak markets, industrial production declined sharply, commerce faltered, and the overall situation was in a state of loss. After 1998, the farm implemented different disposal methods such as leasing, auction, bankruptcy restructuring, and shareholding system reform according to the different situations of its affiliated industrial and commercial enterprises, merging 36 enterprises into 8, reducing enterprise personnel, and striving to establish a modern enterprise system. As a result, the farm saw the emergence of two large-scale enterprises—Lvyuan Chemical Co., Ltd. and Tianying Cylindr Liner Co., Ltd..

　　Objectively speaking, these two enterprises, with a total sales volume of nearly 100 million yuan, maintained stable economic growth amidst the overall silence of the farm's commerce, continuously absorbing employees laid off due to bankruptcies of other enterprises. They indeed played a role in stabilizing morale and made significant contributions to the smooth progress of the farm's reforms. However, constrained by high pollution, high energy consumption, and lack of core technologies, the two enterprises are declining.

　　It is gratifying that the farm's dedicated efforts in crop breeding have achieved significant development. In 2002, the farm integrated various resources to establish Henan Huangfan District Dishen Seed Industry Co., Ltd., responsible for research and development, seed distribution, and the construction of external breeding bases, to expand and strengthen the "Dishen" Brand. Today, Dishen Seed Industry's wheat seeds have covered 1/3 of the wheat planting area in the Huang-Huai region, making it one of the top 50 seed companies nationwide.

　　The Panqu Farm's persistent efforts in pig farming have also yielded significant development. In 2002, the Animal Husbandry General Corporation was restructured into Xinxin Animal Husbandry Co., Ltd., using modern enterprise systems to strengthen management. It is a leading agricultural industrialization enterprise in Henan Province, integrating breeding pigs, pig farming, feed, livestock machinery, and organic fertilizer sales and processing.

　　Due to its large area of orchards, after 1983, the farm, centered around fruit production, led surrounding villagers to build cold storage facilities, developing fruit and vegetable cold storage, becoming one of the largest fruit cold storage and distribution centers in the country. Among them, the farm's 20,000-ton Jin Guo Cold Storage Co., Ltd. is a national high-temperature cold storage enterprise, mainly storing dry and fresh fruits and vegetables. In turn, to leverage the advantages of cold storage, the farm adjusted its fruit production structure, introducing golden pears and round yellow pears from South Korea and Japan, focusing on developing pollution-free fruits. Today, the farm area has over 2,000 mu of standardized pollution-free fruit production demonstration areas and over 12,000 mu of production bases, with considerable economic benefits.

　　However, future challenges such as insufficient land resources, high social management costs, talent shortages, outdated concepts, and weak industrial chains may also restrict the farm's further development of modern agriculture.

　　Towards Large-Scale Agriculture

　　On December 23, 2012, at the National Agricultural Reclamation Work Conference, Yang Shaopin, chief economist of the Ministry of Agriculture, clearly outlined the future development blueprint for the agricultural reclamation cause using "two firsts"—to be the first to achieve agricultural modernization and the first to build a moderately prosperous agricultural reclamation society.

　　In fact, before this, the Panqu Farm had already begun to build its own "large-scale agriculture" empire.

　　Panqu has 150,000 mu of state-owned land and over 10,000 employees with years of experience in standardized agricultural production. Crop production on the farm uses standardized operations, with over 1,000 sets of agricultural machinery, and the level of agricultural modernization has reached over 95%. This is currently the farm's greatest asset, which is incomparable to the small-scale peasant economy under the domestic household contract responsibility system. Although domestic and foreign capital is flocking in as the domestic land market gradually opens up, it is clearly not feasible to transfer large amounts of land in a short period. The key is where to find so many "skilled workers" who understand modern agricultural production?

　　With capital, it must be used well. The farm's advantage lies in "agriculture," and it is a unique "large-scale agriculture." Focusing on "large-scale agriculture" has become the farm's inevitable choice.

　　Strive for excellence, strengthen internal capabilities, transform its own hundreds of thousands of mu of farmland into a demonstration window for modern agriculture in central China, becoming a representative of agricultural productivity and a model for the large-scale and intensive development of agriculture in Henan Province and even the whole country, achieving a qualitative leap from traditional agriculture to modern agriculture. Then, relying on the standardized production of the farm headquarters, the farm will establish project teams to conduct large-scale land transfer outside the farm, continuously replicating the production model of the headquarters, and striving to control 500,000 mu of seed production bases and 1 million mu of special wheat production bases within 10 years.

　　Because the farms' branch farms are not concentrated but scattered throughout more than a dozen locations in Xihua and Fugu counties, the farm plans to first use each branch farm as a center, playing its own guiding and demonstration role, radiating to the surrounding rural areas, thus ensuring the 1.5 million mu of original grain base. Nowadays, the farm workers have leased more than 150,000 mu of land in Hebei, Tianjin, Gansu, and Northeast China. It is not impossible that after 2020, the farm will go out to contract or lease land. In fact, some large farms in China have already been "opening up territories" abroad. Of course, this requires the farm to vigorously introduce relevant talents and continuously strengthen the training of modern farmers.

　　In remote branch farms or areas far from residents, expand the scale of animal husbandry, broaden the scope of animal husbandry, and vigorously develop modern animal husbandry. Within several years, the annual output of pigs will be increased from 300,000 to 1.5 million, the amount of feed will be increased, and 10 million live chickens farm, 100,000 yellow cattle farm and other small poultry and animal farms will be established respectively.

　　Focus on developing high-degree chain industries such as fruit planting, processing, refrigeration, and packaging. Apples, peaches, pears, walnuts, grapes, and jujubes are all products of the farm. The farm cultivates them in a moderate and scaled way, and related industries can develop together.

　　Establish a modern agricultural sightseeing area. This plan is closely related to the farm's creation of a livable and beautiful small town. The farm plans to set aside 5,000 mu of land to build a modern agricultural style park including picking, fishing, dining, and hunting, and there can also be a Henan Agricultural Reclamation Memorial Hall. The sightseeing area organically integrates agriculture and tourism, developing organic agriculture while providing "recreation" opportunities for city dwellers and increasing the farm's income.

　　Livable and beautiful have always been the goals of the farm in building a small town. Blue water and blue sky are the advantages of the farm. Building a livable small town is to make the farm a modern agricultural demonstration area while also becoming a place with high-quality living conditions, as well as a place for tourism, science education, and labor practice. That is, to try to build the farm's small town into a backyard of the city, becoming a spiritual habitat for modern people.

　　The Panqu Farm's moderate planting of small miscellaneous grains is also promising. Nowadays, people are paying more and more attention to health preservation, and the demand for small miscellaneous grains is increasing, and the economic benefits are considerable. Moreover, it can also take the opportunity to develop agricultural product deep processing enterprises, appropriately lengthen the industrial chain, and increase the added value of products. With bulk agricultural products, and the expressway will soon be built to the doorstep of the Panqu Farm, after the construction of the Huaihe "golden waterway", the goods in the farm area can be transported to Shanghai from the waterway in the farm area, and the farm area may become an agricultural product trade exchange center, radiating in all directions.

　　Modern farms, or the modernization of farms, in the context of the continuous fermentation of agriculture, may not take long to truly arrive.