Cooperatives were nothing new. Their earliest form-the Mutual Aid Group-had existed since the country first began its socialist transformation.
Everyone present had heard of cooperatives, but apart from Li Long, none had studied them closely. Xie Yundong had probably asked his elders about them, which was why he had brought the subject up for discussion.
Li Long actually thought it was a good approach. It was not the only way forward, but people in later years had already blazed the trail, so there was nothing wrong with putting it to use ahead of time.
Li Long had never considered himself particularly remarkable. He was not the cleverest or wisest person around. He had simply benefited from every major opportunity and transformation because of his rebirth, and so had earned more money.
He knew perfectly well that without those advantages, his life would not have been much better than anyone else's at the table.
Since Xie Yundong had brought up cooperatives, and they would come into their own in a little over a decade, that showed this was a sound approach. There was no reason they could not start now.
The key was that they already met the basic conditions for forming a cooperative. First, the men more or less shared the same aims. Second, they had plenty of cotton fields. Their families' combined acreage might not reach a thousand mu, but it was at least five or six hundred, enough to give them some scale, with room to expand later.
Third, and very importantly, their level of agricultural mechanization was basically up to standard.
A cooperative at this stage was not the same as the Mutual Aid Groups of the early days. Back then, severe shortages of labor, farm tools, and livestock had left people no choice but to help