bantayden Chapter 1445 2001, Wishes Fulfilled
Chapter 1445 2001, Wishes Fulfilled
Cotton wasn't the only product that saw price increases after 98.
Back then, cotton pickers didn't know that cotton prices were going to rise, so the picking fee was still the same six cents.
Once people learned that cotton prices were soaring, the market price for second-crop cotton rose to 1 yuan. Some cotton plants with more green bolls could even be picked for a third crop, and the price for picking third-crop cotton rose to 1.5 yuan.
The price of picking cotton will continue to rise based on this, and even if the price of cotton drops the following year, the price of picking cotton will remain at the same level as the previous year.
It's not just cotton picking fees that are rising in price, but also various agricultural supplies.
The prices of seeds, fertilizers, plastic film, and pesticides all began to rise in the winter of 98, and have continued to rise slightly every year since.
The cost of growing cotton has suddenly increased.
If cotton prices can remain at the 98 level, then farmers will still make money.
However, from 99 to 06, the price of cotton remained at around 4 to 5 yuan.
Even if the price of agricultural inputs goes up, the fourth team can still make some money thanks to the increased production guaranteed by drip irrigation, although it won't be much.
However, those in other villages who grow cotton using the traditional methods can only lose money every year they plant it.
Ultimately, farmers either have to pay for the drip irrigation transformation of their farmland themselves, or they have to give up growing cotton and wait for the right opportunity.
Some major investors are patiently waiting for an opportunity, hoping to catch another big price surge like in 98 and make back all the money they lost.
In 1998, after Li Long's cooperative made a fortune from contracting a lot of land, he basically stopped caring about growing cotton.
His main focus was on the deal with Liu Shanmin, as well as cotton harvesters, cotton cleaning equipment, and cotton ginning plants.
The August 1st Sugar Factory did not go bankrupt because of this small butterfly, but due to its relatively outdated production equipment and rigid system, it was inevitable that it would reduce production and shrink its scale.
In addition, with the influx of white sugar from other parts of the country at this time, the Bayi Sugar Factory lost its competitive advantage, and Li Long became a major customer instead.
Originally, Li Long had made two preparations, thinking that if the Bayi Sugar Factory could not survive, he would start building a small sugar factory himself.
Even now, farmers in many places still grow sugar beets.
While the profit margin for this stuff isn't as high as cotton in 1998, it's more stable. As long as there are factories buying it, you can make money.
The former Section Chief Hu has now become Deputy Factory Director Hu, in charge of sales.
The monthly demand for white sugar in Lilong's area has increased from over 100 tons to 300 tons.
The original production scale of the August 1st Sugar Factory was 1000 tons per day, but now it has been reduced to 3,000 tons per month.
Li Long has become a major client, and Deputy Factory Director Hu is now very polite to him.
Of the many cadres and employees, a considerable number were transferred, laid off, had their seniority bought out, or retired early.
The reform of state-owned enterprises is inevitable, and it is the same all over the country.
Although Kazakhstan also produces sugar beets, its sugar industry remains underdeveloped and struggles to meet domestic demand.
The sugar that Li Long transported was still in high demand.
In 2000, Director Qian was promoted to deputy head of the autonomous region's supply and marketing system due to his outstanding work performance and strategic vision.
The path he established in Beiting City for exporting light industrial goods to Kazakhstan has not ceased with his departure; on the contrary, it continues and shows signs of expansion.
The Beiting City supply and marketing system has forged a new path and has been commended multiple times at industry conferences of the autonomous region's supply and marketing system.
When Director Qian was transferred, Li Xiangqian was transferred to the Beiting Supply and Marketing Cooperative as deputy director.
Zhou Yuan's promotion to director in the county can be seen as leaving a good partner for Li Long.
Because crab seedlings are released into the small lake every year, crabs can now be seen moving around on the dike every evening in May.
Li Long would occasionally go there to pick up some crabs and take them back to steam and eat.
In 1999, Mingming and Haohao were admitted to No. 1 Middle School, and their scores were among the top in the school.
After returning from 15 days of military training, they excitedly told Li Long and Gu Xiaoxia that they had run into their former elementary school classmates, and their old promise had actually come true.
Gu Xiaoxia was transferred to the Fourth Primary School of the county as principal at the end of 98. She was conflicted about balancing her work and life.
On one hand, there's his beloved education career, and on the other hand, there's his wife's hesitation about having another child. Li Long didn't try to persuade her; he left it entirely to her to decide.
In the end, Gu Xiaoxia felt that women should also have careers, and that having children should be a separate matter.
Li Long didn't say anything, but he knew that Mingming and Haohao, the two children, were very disappointed, saying that they had long wanted to have a younger brother or sister.
The two adults didn't pay much attention to what the two children were saying. That's just how the atmosphere was at that time. Children have limited influence on adults. The Li family is considered to be relatively open-minded.
After Liu Gaolou's son was admitted to university, his wife moved to Khorgos, and the couple began to run the business that Liu Shanmin had transferred from there.
Li Long could clearly sense that Liu Gaolou had become much more restrained in his speech and actions since his wife came over.
This is a good thing.
Li Long originally anticipated that the two of them would most likely divorce after their child reached adulthood.
After all, Liu Gaolou was quite adventurous in the latter part of the 90s.
As a herder who combines traditional and modern methods, Halim's pasture has been expanding. He now has more than 10,000 head of livestock and employs more than 20 young men. The original summer pasture and winter grazing grounds of the tribe were no longer enough to accommodate them, so he contracted the pastures abandoned by another nearby tribe.
Because of his large family business, he provided each young man with a motorcycle for convenience. Riding a motorcycle to herd sheep and cattle was much faster than riding a horse, and it was also very fashionable.
In the years around the turn of the millennium, motorcycles became an essential mode of transportation for young people. They were popular for a long time, both in cities and rural areas.
Of course, this also gives traffic police a huge headache, since it's too easy for accidents to happen.
This reminded Li Long of those girls wearing helmets, riding motorcycles, and with flowing white dresses that he had seen on short videos in his previous life; it seemed that one or two of them would disappear every now and then.
Li Long's memories of his previous life are becoming increasingly hazy, but he clearly remembers one thing: in 2001, the government liberalized cotton procurement, allowing private individuals to enter the cotton market.
He had been preparing for this day for a long time.
From the mid-to-late 90s, Li Long began experimenting with using cotton harvesters to harvest cotton in the cooperative's fields.
By 2000, he had purchased three cotton harvesters, and half of the cooperative's 3 mu of cotton was harvested using these machines.
Of these three cotton harvesters, the first two are the same model, while the third is an improved version.
Following Li Long's advice, Lao Du, at the machinery factory in Kui City, accelerated the transformation and technological upgrading of the second type of cotton harvester while stabilizing the technology of the first type.
The Type 2 was officially finalized in 1999. In addition to having the stable harvesting technology of the Type 1, it was equipped with a cotton winding device, which, like the new cotton harvesters that came out about 10 years later, could pack the harvested cotton into a 1-ton package.
Due to agricultural technology limitations such as seeds, pesticides, and fertilizers, the yield of cotton under drip irrigation in the cooperative is currently stable at around 350 kg per mu, with a high yield of 400 kg, but this is rare.
So basically, there's one egg per three acres, and the yield per acre is very average.
Because of Li Long's influence, both the military and local authorities accelerated the large-scale planting of cotton. Every year in August and September, a large number of cotton pickers would come from Gansu, Henan, Shaanxi, Sichuan and other places in the region.
Most of them are picked up as soon as they arrive at the train station, or they are taken by skilled intermediaries to pre-determined counties, cities, or farms, where they are then assigned to farmers or workers to begin long-term cotton-picking tasks.
Because the cooperative had three cotton harvesters and had stable cooperation in the early stages, it continued to focus on connecting with schools and recruiting students to harvest cotton until 2001.
At this time, the task of picking cotton had expanded from middle school to university, and down to primary school and even kindergarten.
Yes, you read that right. During a certain period, some kindergarten seniors even had to pick seven or eight kilograms of cotton every day.
Of course, this was quickly stopped. After all, it really was a bit outrageous to say it out loud.
However, this also illustrates the current shortage of manpower for manual cotton picking.
Students from inland areas who have been admitted to several universities in northern Xinjiang, especially Shicheng University, have experienced picking cotton in recent years. Many of them are seeing cotton for the first time and find it very novel.
Of course, after working in the cotton field for two days, I couldn't stand it anymore. Recently, the temperature has been as high as 37 or 38 degrees Celsius, with no shade and the sun shining down scorchingly.
Under such circumstances, let alone working, some people can't even stand for long periods of time.
However, Shicheng University is under the jurisdiction of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, so the requirements in this regard are relatively strict.
In the previous life, the technology for machine-harvesting cotton did not become relatively mature until a few years later, and then it began to be used on a large scale.
Thanks to Li Long, this little butterfly, China's domestic cotton harvesting machines achieved a technological breakthrough around the turn of the millennium, reaching a world-leading level.
Moreover, the price has also dropped, becoming about half the price of imported cotton harvesters.
Of course, not many people can afford it. In addition, cotton and linen companies in various counties and cities still do not accept machine-picked cotton. Their cotton cleaning equipment, like the sugar-making equipment of the Bayi Sugar Factory, is somewhat outdated and cannot clean machine-picked cotton properly.
Fortunately, they have been collecting clean cotton, and Li Long's embossing factory and the county cotton and linen company have always had a relatively pleasant working relationship.
Although Manager Luo of the cotton and linen company had been transferred, his successor still accepted the high-quality cotton sent by Li Long.
Before 2001, Li Long took advantage of the off-season for farming to go to the autonomous region many times to handle the procedures.
The vast network of relationships he had built up over the years came in handy.
The complex relationships he had with the professors at the Agricultural University (formerly the College of Agriculture), as well as the staff of the Department of Agriculture he met during the large-scale transformation of 10,000 mu of farmland and his cooperative's experimental project, actually gave him some advantages.
In addition, Li Juan and Wang Yusheng, although they had not worked in the government for very long, were quite familiar with the application process.
Therefore, in 2001, when the state began to open up the cotton purchasing industry to private enterprises, Li Long's cotton ginning factory was among the first batch of enterprises to obtain the relevant permits.
This procedure requires direct approval from the autonomous region, meaning only qualified enterprises can obtain this permit to enter the cotton market.
Li Long didn't want to get this stuff for buying and selling cotton; he just wanted to make his machine-harvested cotton business legitimate.
After all, in the next few years, the price of picking cotton by hand will rise to 2.5 yuan, and that's the price for the first batch of cotton.
The price of second-crop cotton can rise to 3 yuan, but the cotton from the second crop might only fetch 3 yuan when sold to cotton and linen companies.
This is the dilemma cotton farmers will face in the coming years. Hiring someone to pick the cotton won't bring in any money. Leaving it in the fields is a real waste. They have very few hands; even if they pick it all up by the time it snows, they won't be able to finish even a third or a quarter of the cotton.
Li Long still vaguely remembers a scene: when he went to a private cotton gin to sell cotton, an old cotton farmer was pleading with the gin's workers.
“Give me a little more money, even if it’s just 50 cents. I’m not even counting the transportation cost. I get 2.5 yuan per kilogram from someone picking it up. If you’re buying it for 2.5 yuan here, I won’t make a penny. I’ll even have to pay the workers who transport and pick the cotton and cover their lunch expenses.”
The manager and workers at the cotton ginning factory coldly dismissed the old cotton farmer: "Sell it or leave. We're not a charity. This is the price you'll find everywhere you go!"
At that time, Li Long only regretted that he didn't have the ability. Now that he has cotton harvesting machines and the qualification to purchase cotton, at least farmers have another option when cotton prices are low.
Li Long wasn't the only one who managed to get the permits that year. Many investors had their eyes on XJ's cotton market long ago. As soon as the autonomous region opened up the market, many people pounced on it like wolves seeing their prey.
Subsequently, private cotton ginning factories sprang up everywhere, with capital from the southeast being particularly abundant.
Furthermore, they would call each other to inform each other of prices, or rather, to negotiate lower prices.
Li Long stood out from the crowd. His cotton ginning factory was one of the few local enterprises and one of the very few that had the ability to clean machine-picked cotton.
Li Long's presence has made some investors uneasy.
Before the cotton harvest even began, he received a phone call from some so-called business associations that wanted him to join, but Li Long refused.
Some people even called him hoping he could "standardize" the prices with others, arguing that it would make it easier to make money that way.
Li Long also refused.
As a result, his cotton ginning factory began to be suppressed and slandered.
He was all too familiar with this scenario. Last time, a cotton ginning mill in a certain county opened at over nine yuan before a cotton purchase, but it was only purchased for one day before being jointly suppressed, banks stopped lending, and certain parties conducted joint inspections.
But Li Long was not afraid at all at this moment.
His cash flow was frighteningly abundant, and his relationship with the credit union was stronger than those people could imagine.
Therefore, suppressing this issue with funds will not work. As for spreading rumors?
As a local entrepreneur, Li Long has appeared on television stations at both the prefecture and county levels far too often. He has also funded the construction of numerous roads and sponsored a considerable number of schools.
As a result, the rumors were debunked by many people as soon as they emerged and before they could spread.
Even those behind the capital are somewhat helpless when faced with such an unyielding person.
Li Long is certainly not a philanthropist. When he announced the purchase of cotton, he was definitely not doing it at a loss. He just wanted to break some of the monopolies of capital.
After all, in ten years or so, many private cotton ginning factories were acquired by capital from Southeast China. Without corresponding checks and balances, these people could oppress farmers to the point that they couldn't earn any money at all.
Even so, when his cotton ginning factory opened for business in 2001, most of the cotton farmers from the entire township, including those from nearby towns, came to him to sell their cotton.
This was something Li Long hadn't expected.
But thinking about it, it's normal. Over the years, he has gradually built up his reputation, and most farmers still believe in him.
And most importantly, Li Long gave cash.
Yes, how could he be short of money?
Another unexpected thing for Li Long was that many cotton farmers who came to sell cotton began to inquire about the harvesting price of his cotton harvester.
In 2001, due to a weak market, the price of cotton dropped to just over 3 yuan, and the price of picking cotton reached 1 yuan.
This has resulted in cotton farmers generally operating at a loss—except for cooperatives, since nearly half of the land is harvested by machine.
The price tags outside the cotton pressing factory show the prices for hand-picked cotton and machine-picked cotton.
Although hand-picking cotton costs 4-5 cents more than machine-picked cotton, everyone knows that machine-picking cotton is more convenient.
Therefore, many cotton farmers have already started to consider using machines for harvesting next year if it is cheaper.
Li Junhai, the person in charge of the cotton pressing factory, and his employees had all received Li Long's instructions to go and talk to the cotton farmers one by one.
There are two main aspects. First, machine-harvested cotton is now worth two cents per kilogram (the price has increased).
For the second type of machine harvesting, a special seeder is needed. Of course, this seeder is not expensive, costing only a few hundred yuan.
Upon hearing that it would cost two cents per kilogram, the cotton farmers were extremely excited and began planning to plant machine-harvested cotton next year.
The story spread far and wide, eventually attracting the attention of the county's agricultural bureau. They then collaborated with the county television station to interview Li Long about machine-harvested cotton.
This wasn't the first time Li Long had done something like this, and he wasn't intimidated. He revealed the entire process of machine cotton harvesting, its price, the technology of current cotton harvesters, and their pricing.
Anyway, he also gets a share of the profits from the cotton harvester.
Whether it caused a sensation or not, Li Long didn't know, but according to preliminary statistics from the Agricultural Bureau, in 2002, nearly half of the cotton farmers in the county started growing machine-harvested cotton.
Because planting this stuff doesn't affect manual harvesting; in fact, it provides another avenue for harvesting.
Li Long's interview also attracted the attention of other cotton ginning factory managers, and some began to pay attention to the situation of machine-harvested cotton.
Old Du made a special call to Li Long, saying that about ten sets of cotton cleaning equipment had been ordered from the factory, and some people had also started to inquire about the cotton harvester.
This is of course a good thing.
At least for cotton farmers, having one more ginning mill that can handle machine-harvested cotton will lighten their burden.
Li Long thought that because of his interview, more cotton farmers might want to use machines to harvest cotton next year, so he ordered two more cotton harvesters from Lao Du.
In the spring, we started recruiting people from the team and training them in cotton harvester operation.
Those in the village who were about Li Qiang's age had already grown up. Most of them didn't get into high school and went out to work, looking down on the meager pay. They didn't have much work to do in the production team anyway, so they mostly joined the cooperative and took charge of a specific task.
Li Long announced that he would be recruiting people to mine cotton, and a large number of people signed up.
Which young man wouldn't want to do this kind of thing?
Although the job was only for a few months, Li Long paid a very high salary during that time.
The cotton ginning plant and cotton harvesting machines do not belong to the cooperative; they are Li Long's own businesses.
Li Long has completely let go of the responsibility at the cooperative; he is currently waiting for the right opportunity.
Although land can be contracted out to the Production and Construction Corps, the crops harvested from that land need to be sold to the regiments, and the prices are determined by the regiments.
So Li Long is waiting for the reforms there.
In 2002, all the cotton in the four teams was planted with machine-harvested cotton, and the era of large-scale cotton farmers officially began.
At that moment, Li Long was on the north bank of Xiaohaizi, holding a net, turning around, twisting his waist, and casting it out with force.
Slowly closing the net.
He believed that a dazzling harvest awaited him.
P.S.: Thank you Crocodile Tears L for the generous donation, and thank you to readers 20241218084644424, Qihang101, and others for their donations. Thank you all for your support.
A closing statement will be released later, and the final giveaway of monthly tickets for this book will take place at midnight. (End of Chapter)