Cotton was not the only thing that rose in price after 1998.
That year, the cotton pickers had not known cotton prices would rise, so picking wages had remained at the original sixty fen.
Once they learned that cotton prices were soaring, the going rate for picking Second-Crop Cotton jumped straight to one yuan. Some fields with plenty of green bolls could yield Third-Crop Cotton, and the picking rate for that rose to one yuan fifty.
Cotton-picking wages continued rising from that baseline afterward. Even when cotton prices dropped the following year, picking wages remained at the previous year's level.
Picking wages were not the only costs that rose. All kinds of agricultural supplies did too.
Seeds, chemical fertilizer, plastic film, and pesticides all began rising in price in the winter of 1998, and increased a little every year after that.
The cost of growing cotton shot up.
If cotton prices could have stayed at their 1998 level, farmers would still have made money.
But from 1999 through 2006, cotton prices stayed around four to five yuan.
At those prices, even with agricultural supplies becoming more expensive, the Fourth Team could still make a little money thanks to the increased yields guaranteed by drip irrigation. Just not much.
But farmers in other villages who grew cotton using traditional methods could only lose money year after year.
Eventually, they either paid out of pocket to convert their fields to drip irrigation or gave up growing cotton and waited for an opportunity.
A few major growers kept waiting desperately for their chance, hoping for another price surge like 1998 that would let them recoup all their previous losses at once.
In 1998, Li Long's Cooperative had made a handsome profit thanks to the large amount of land it contracted. After that, he