At the edge of the Cooperative's cotton fields, the crowd had not thinned after Professor Yang and his group left. Instead, it had grown.
One group was from the Agricultural Technical Extension School, brought over by Principal Yang. During Professor Yang's visit over the previous two days, they had joined his research here and asked him about cultivation techniques.
After Professor Yang left, they had not stopped there. They stayed to discuss the prospects of growing cotton on saline-alkali land with Xie Yundong and the others.
The township had plenty of saline-alkali land. If it could all be used to grow cotton, they could increase incomes without reducing grain production.
It killed two birds with one stone. Not only the Agricultural Technical Extension School but the township authorities could see the benefits, and they would certainly give it strong support.
The other group consisted of villagers. The Cooperative's households were far from the only ones growing cotton in the village.
Last year, the Li Family had taken the lead in planting cotton, and nearly all the households that followed had made money. Watermelon seeds were no longer fetching good prices. By the end of last year, the price had fallen below one yuan, and even then they would not sell.
So if people wanted to make money, they could only follow suit and grow cotton.
Those households had learned their techniques from the Li Family, and even the least successful had made quite a bit. As a result, more people in the Fourth Team had planted cotton this year.
Hearing that a professor from Bayi Agricultural College had come, these people naturally wanted to learn cotton-growing techniques from him. After all, they had learned from Li Long last year, and Li Long had said he had learned his cultivation techniques