In the Horqin Desert of Inner Mongolia, yellow sand is rolling. But in the hinterland of the desert, 14500 mu of rice, alfalfa and potatoes are blooming in the wind.
This is the "Shaliangge" desert farm in Li Shaohua. In August of 20 14, he wanted to plant rice in the desert on a large scale, and the locals called him "an idiot".
In 20 15, in order to cultivate 5,000 mu of rice in the desert ravaged by strong winds, Li Shaohua researched 5 inventions and 18 patented technologies.
In March this year, a bumper harvest of 14500 mu of farmland was achieved. This not only changed farmers' impression of Li Shaohua, but also brought the recognition of capital: Shaliangge received 4 million yuan of angel round financing.
Note: Li Shaohua promises that the data in this document are correct and will be responsible for its authenticity. The pencil track has been backed up for recording and shorthand, and the objectivity of the content is recognized.
Grow rice in the desert.
August 20 14, Naiman Banner, Tongliao City, Inner Mongolia, in the hinterland of Horqin Desert. In the barren sand moraine, an ear of rice hangs down.
This is the first time that Li Shaohua has seen desert rice. At that time, rice had been planted in the desert for more than 30 years, but due to natural environmental reasons such as strong desert wind and poor water retention of sandy soil, this method was limited to small-scale artificial planting, and the cost was as high as 7000 yuan/mu.
Li Shaohua spilled a bottle of water on the ground and found that the water quickly penetrated into the ground. "There is no water in the soil." Stepping on the yellow sand, he imagined that this land was a vast grassland thousands of years ago, and secretly made up his mind to make this desert full of rice and flowers.
The reason why he wants to plant rice on a large scale in the desert is because he has his own considerations: the black soil in the northeast has germs, but the sand is primitive and pollution-free; The desert groundwater is weakly alkaline and the water quality is good; Local application of organic fertilizer, sufficient fertilizer, "2.5 cubic meters of cow dung per mu"; There are no weeds and insects in the sand, so there is no need to sprinkle pesticides.
◆ The sandstorm flooded the tractor.
For 46-year-old Li Shaohua, the greatest significance of planting rice in the desert is that it can help local farmers get rich and feed more people.
Therefore, on the phone with the general manager of New China Agriculture, Li Shaohua promised to help the former grow desert rice. The plane took off from Heilongjiang and landed in tongliao airport. Li Shaohua established Shaliangge and started a large-scale mechanized planting experiment of desert rice.
Planting 5000 mu of desert rice
The first step is to transfer 5000 mu of sand. Then, Li Shaohua began land planning and studied how to realize sand planting.
Rolling on the yellow sand, bulldozers are leveling the land.
Every day, just before dawn, he would walk in the desert. For each piece of land, according to a node of 5 meters, he planned the land use.
Four months later, Horqin ushered in winter. The farm is full of excitement: in the cold wind, 100 more than excavators and bulldozers are buzzing in the sand, and the chassis is steaming.
Li Shaohua chose to level the land in winter in order to avoid the peak season of engineering construction and reduce the rental cost of large machinery.
10 days later, he found that the construction team could not complete the sand preparation work within the original 40-day construction period. In desperation, Li Shaohua had a brainwave, refitting the full-automatic laser precision grader into a road scraper, and became an all-laser grader.
The improved grader can clear 70 mu of sand a day. "This task was completed within 20 days, and the cost of land preparation was reduced by 80%."
At the same time, Li Shaohua began to lay waterproof membrane. In order to improve the service life of the membrane, he developed an improved version of the membrane with several enterprises in Shandong. Compared with the tensile strength of ordinary plastic film, the improved plastic film can bear the weight of 7 bricks (generally less than 5).
In addition, in order to realize mechanized planting operation, Li Shaohua increased the film-laying depth to 0.8m ~1.2m. ..
◆ Four employees are laying waterproof membrane.
Subsequently, the work of building electricity, building roads, drilling wells and digging canals was completed step by step. Li Shaohua also began to raise seedlings, and the variety was Wuchang Daohuaxiang No.2.
In the open seedling shed, seedlings with a height of more than one finger grow neatly on the seedling tray. After the transformation of Li Shaohua, the height of the bottom of the seedling tray was increased by 5 mm in addition to the eye holes. In this way, 5mm water can be accumulated at the bottom of the tray to supply water for the seedlings.
Different from ordinary seedling raising, Li Shaohua does not use black soil or add nutrient soil, and only uses sand to complete seedling raising. According to him, this soil seedling technology has applied for a patent in the Patent Office.
He rolled up a plate of seedlings effortlessly, folded it in half and released it, and the seedlings were put away at will. "The most ideal state is that the seedlings grow to three leaves and one core, and the height does not exceed 16 cm, and then transplanted into the ground."
It's time to transplant rice seedlings, just in time for the strong wind. On Children's Day, a strong wind of 10 covered more than 100 mu of seedlings with thick sand.
In order to prevent the wind, Li Shaohua took great pains. For example, to strengthen the nursery, he developed structural steel.
Another strong wind hit, and another nursery next to Li Shaohua's home was blown to pieces, losing hundreds of thousands of yuan. "There is nothing in my shed."
In addition, on-site management is not easy.
Because there were two strong winds at the beginning, four or five salesmen invited by Li Shaohua resigned and left because of the difficult conditions. Li Shaohua can only explore by himself.
In order to raise the temperature of groundwater, he used the pressure of groundwater to drive a fan to raise the water temperature for well water cooling.
In addition, he also developed a rapid release method of nutrients from cow dung cell wall, a dropper method using suspending agent, a water-saving warming weeding cover and so on.
Re-circulation 14500 mu of land.
After all kinds of twists and turns, Li Shaohua finally reached the rice harvest season. On National Day, he stood in the field and looked at the golden dividing line in the distance-a desolate desert on one side and golden rice on the other.
◆ Green seedlings are dotted with dew.
"I can't stop feeling and moving inside." The rough northeast man's eyes are a little moist.
Standing in front of the weighbridge, Li Shaohua counted this year's harvest. "The average yield per mu is 600 Jin, and 5,000 mu is 3 million Jin, which is 20 Jin less than expected." But to his delight, the production cost per mu of land has dropped below 4000 yuan.
But time waits for no one, and rice sales is a new problem. In addition to promoting the company's investment in self-developed smart fresh rice cabinets to cover high-end communities, Li Shaohua also promoted them through Shaliangge's official WeChat, adopting distribution mode, agent joining mode and crowdfunding pre-sale mode.
Consumers' recognition of desert rice is in line with Li Shaohua's expectations. Due to the large temperature difference between day and night in the desert and the rich minerals in sandy soil, the protein content of desert rice is 2.6 times that of ordinary rice. The rice grains are fuller. The cooked rice is chewy and has a delicate taste.
Last June, 3 million Jin of rice was sold out.
In order to test other varieties of desert planting techniques, Li Shaohua transferred 65,438+04,500 mu of sandy land last year to plant eight crops including millet, potato, alfalfa, oats, peanuts and potatoes.
Last year, he realized the first step of leading local farmers to get rich: he set up agricultural cooperatives, hired local farmers to manage farmland, and paid dividends to farmers per acre when receiving goods.
On the product of desert rice, that is Shageliang Li Shaohua.
In March of this year, Shaliangge received 4 million yuan in angel round financing.
In the second year, he plans to expand the planting area to 30 thousand mu; By 2023, Li Shaohua plans to plant 1 10,000 mu of sandy land crops.