The Story of Rural Entrepreneurship: An IT Man Returning to Farmland

IT industry, high-tech industry, belongs to a relatively high-end industry. Traditional agriculture, perhaps because it is too traditional, makes people gradually ignore its value. However, under the financial tsunami and the wave of urbanization, some people did the opposite, returning to the most primitive agriculture from the IT industry, and Zhou Yutang was one of them, starting their own new world from office buildings to cornfields.

Born into a peasant family, Zhou Yutang, like most people, worked as a small white-collar worker in an office building from nine to five after graduation, and worked in the IT industry.

In 2007, after working in the IT industry for 10 years, the turning point of life came to Zhou Yutang. Zhou Yutang's company went public successfully. As one of the founders of the company, he cashed in his original shares, re-signed the employment agreement and became a worker of the company. However, for him, this incident means that he has been bought out of the IT profession for 10 years.

"In fact, I have been short of money for many years. There are too many things to achieve to get money. " The first thing to be solved, of course, is the house. At that time, Beijing's housing prices soared under the Olympic concept. Zhou Yutang began to look around the house and realized that no matter how much money he earned, the price of the house always went up much faster than making money. "The accumulation of so-called 10 year is not as good as the price increase of 1 year."

So he thought of starting a business again. However, he found the road to starting a business difficult. "The IT industry I am familiar with is highly saturated and the competition is unprecedented. I used to do project outsourcing in Huawei, and then I realized that in the IT industry, winners take all, and small IT companies can only do some profiteering things by relationships. In 2007-2008, Zhou Yutang could not find a suitable project for the time being, so he put his money into the stock market. In this bull market, he gained a lot and narrowly escaped. The gains in the stock market gave him more raw money.

Watching the child grow up day by day, his worries are getting heavier and heavier. The voice of "Better Go Home" began to echo in Zhou Yutang's ears, and he decided to go back to the countryside. Followed by another kind of worry, for families accustomed to urban life for many years, rural life is too inconvenient. After some hard thinking, Zhou Yutang finally found a solution to kill two birds with one stone. He settled in Guilin and Liuzhou, and then worked in the countryside. "I don't do agriculture because I love agriculture. Doing agriculture is the choice after planning thousands of roads. In fact, after a period of operation, I began to really love this business. " He later admitted it.

In 2008, Zhou Yutang rented 300 mu of land in his hometown of Liuzhou, and started his agricultural business. Although I am good at information technology, I am not familiar with agriculture, and everything is strange to Zhou Yutang. He began to study what crops to plant, from planting environment, management, investment in machinery construction ... a series of things were slowly explored from the beginning.

He is the first person to grow corn on a large scale in the local area. After painstaking research, careful maintenance, and the land is very suitable, the American "Golden Lion King" variety corn he planted is growing vigorously. After entering the site, Zhou Yutang invested heavily in infrastructure construction, including electricity, wells, irrigation channels, living facilities and various farm tools. The infrastructure of large-scale farms is obviously more efficient than that of small farms. He invested about 25,000 yuan and irrigated 70% of the land. "Next year, an additional investment of 1 10,000 yuan will be made to basically achieve full coverage of land irrigation." It is also a rural area, and it will cost at least100000 yuan to open channels and cover the whole village. He tasted the benefits of large-scale agriculture for the first time.

In farm management, he specially invited some people to help on the farm. At first, he lost a lot of money because of poor management. After he learned the lesson, he formulated a distribution system with clear rewards and punishments, managed the land by slicing, and then made a proportional commission, which well mobilized the enthusiasm of workers. Last June, the local area suffered a once-in-a-century flood. A lot of corn has fallen or been flooded, but basically none of the corn in his field has fallen.

In addition, Zhou Yutang has invested a lot of energy to expand the market and open up the circulation links. From the first-class wholesale market to the second-class wholesaler, he just put it down one by one. Moreover, the concept of circular economy is introduced to make full use of every part of corn, such as buying corn stalks to feed sheep farms. Next, he is planning to export more, even to countries with higher incomes.

"Green cornfields. Seeing the growth of land crops, to be honest, the sense of accomplishment far exceeds the completion of an IT program or an IT project. Although I lost money at the beginning of my business, I basically found a development path that suits me. That's all that matters. I am just on the road now, but I have enjoyed this life now. " Zhou Yutang said with a smile that the quiet life in the countryside has made him think more about life, and farming and studying in the rain is his current living situation. He also intends to write a book about his experience. "This plan has been well received by netizens."