On the second day of the Chinese New Year, when Ma Dexiang and Lin Yulan brought their children to have dinner together, Lin Guoqing took out the bamboo leaf green tea that Liu Ni had bought to treat his brother-in-law.
Ma Dexiang made a "slurp" sound every time he took a sip of wine, and chatted with Lin Guoqing about family matters with his arm around his shoulder.
"Hey, Guoqing, I have a letter here. Do you want to know about it in advance?"
Lin Guoqing sighed and poured him another glass. "Why don't you tell me? How can I understand if you don't tell me?"
Ma Dexiang laughed out loud. "I only found out about this on the 29th. There's a large agricultural family in the neighboring county that wants to contract some land, preferably connected together. They came to ask if anyone in our village wants to rent it out."
Chen Chunhua was originally sitting on the side chatting with Lin Yulan. When she heard this, she raised her eyebrows and turned around.
"Then if I rent out a small piece individually, won't he want it?"
Ma Dexiang shouted "Hi" and gestured with his hands, still a little drunk. "He's a big farmer with machinery. If you give him one or two acres of land, it wouldn't take him as long to get his machinery up and down."
The purpose of renting land to grow crops is to make more money, so a large, connected piece of land is definitely the best. I heard that his machine can rumble all the way across and plant the rice seedlings as they go, and then when it's time for the summer harvest and autumn harvest, he can just use the machine to harvest the rice and go away! Isn't that amazing!
Everyone in the room exclaimed in surprise, this is too amazing!
"If we had this kind of machine, wouldn't it be very convenient to farm?" Lin Yulan's eyes widened.
Ma Dexiang waved his hand and said, "Where can we get such a machine? It's all imported from the Japanese. I wonder how much it costs! Should we buy one ourselves and use it on our six and a half acres, or on Guoqing's three and a half acres?
I'm afraid even if I farm for a lifetime I might not be able to pay back the money I paid for the machine!"
Lin Guoqing agreed. "I don't think mine is owned by one person. The large agricultural company you mentioned probably has policy support, or several people have teamed up to do this, otherwise they wouldn't have been able to get the machine."
"That's the truth!" Ma Dexiang nodded. "When I went to the township, the Party Secretary of another village told me that. If someone wants a large piece of land, at least 20 mu, then several families must agree to rent it.
It doesn't matter if they're not connected. It happens to be the Lunar New Year right now, so as long as we can finalize the matter before the spring plowing, we can discuss how to redivide the land among our own villagers when the time comes."
"So what do they say about rent?"
"The rent isn't much, it's just the tax we pay, and then a symbolic amount. 10 yuan a year for one mu of land is good enough. After all, people have to make money too."
The rent is indeed very cheap. With Lin Guoqing's family's current income, paying more than 30 yuan a year is really not enough.
But the key point is that this frees up manpower to do other things! People who already work and earn money no longer have to desperately ask for leave to run back and forth between spring plowing and autumn harvest.
You have to buy your own food.
"There's more grain now, and it's not expensive to buy. I saw people selling grain in town and in the county after the autumn harvest before the New Year. They don't need grain coupons, and the prices are about the same as at the grain and oil station."
Chen Chunhua nodded, "As long as we buy it early and buy more, there will definitely be enough to eat."
What she wanted most was to rent out the land. The three laborers in their family could all make money. Even Liang Shengdi could make 5 to 10 yuan by rowing out and selling fish for a day during the slack season.
Although Mrs. Liang always spent half of her income on food, over time, her piggy bank had accumulated quite a bit of money. Last time, she was even showing off the tin box to Chen Chunhua!
"But it also depends on whether the other family is willing to rent it out. If they all want to farm it themselves, then they won't be interested in our 10 mu of land!"
In fact, more than half of the people are willing to rent out their properties.
Nowadays, there are people making fortunes by doing small businesses every day. There are more and more people earning 10,000 yuan per capita. It is no longer a novelty to report one today and another tomorrow.
Most young and middle-aged people want to go out and do something. Everyone thinks that doing anything can make more money than farming. For example, Chen Chunhua is the best example in Sihe Village.
It has both a breeding farm and a mushroom house. Not only did he build a new building and buy a TV, but his children all went to school and have promising futures, and he was also able to help his relatives make money together.
Of course, it’s not that no one knows how hard they work, enduring day and night.
But isn't farming hard? Working in the sun and wind, and having to depend on the weather for food, is hard work. At least farmers earn money from their hard work, while farming only fills your stomach.
Only some older people, such as Ma Dexiang's parents, refused to agree.
"It's only been a few years since liberation! And only a few years since we've been working on our own! We haven't even had a few years of good life yet! And you're already thinking of renting out the land? Now it's renting! What about later? Will you sell it later? Land is the lifeblood of farmers! Don't you need it? Don't you have any conscience?"
Ma Dexiang, the village party secretary who initiated this incident, was criticized to pieces. He was scolded at home and sprayed when he went out. He almost covered his face with a headscarf.
"What are you selling? Who said we can sell the land? These lands belong to the country! They are collective! No one can sell them!" Ma Dexiang could only sit in front of the microphone and tell everyone about the matter through the village radio.
There was no way he could stand out. The group of old men and women didn't give him a chance to speak at all!
"I'm just making a suggestion! Someone happens to want to rent some land, so I'm asking if anyone wants to rent it out! It's not mandatory! If you don't want to rent it out, you can just farm on your own! But you might have to move to another location before the spring plowing..."
Just after the fifth day of the Lunar New Year, Mrs. Ma pulled the old man to sit in the field and told the children at home that this land was the roots of the Ma family! If they wanted to rent it out, they would have to go through her head!
"If you don't know, you might think we're selling the land. We're selling your very roots." Sanni rolled her eyes at her angrily. "Didn't you hear what Daddy said? This land is collective. We only have the right to use it, not to sell it. You can't sell it even if you want to!"
"What's the difference!" Old Lady Ma shouted angrily, "If we rent it out, this land will no longer be in our hands. What's the difference between that and selling it? I won't rent it! I absolutely won't rent it!"
There are many elderly people like her. Especially when they saw the two old men and women in the village party secretary's family sitting in the fields, they followed suit and ran to the fields to confront the young people in the family.
Those youngsters were so angry that they kept shouting, "It's cold, don't sit on the ground with your old bones!"
Only Liang Shengdi was sitting on a rock beside the field, taking out melon seeds one by one from her pocket to watch the fun, and from time to time she would take another piece of crispy candy from Lin Shumei's hand to change her mouth.
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