[Old sayings about farming + agricultural suspense + seven-day seed inspection + village management + female growth + group portrait construction]
There are only seven days left for spring plowing, but a large number of the rice seeds bought by dozens of farmers in Qingling County have failed to germinate, become sour and rotten.
Shen Ji's seed shop was blocked and the shopkeeper Shen Shoutian was taken away by the county government on the spot, and the shop was about to be closed down. Yongfeng Grain Company took the opportunity to sell new seeds on credit, but the price was the farmers' land deeds as collateral.
Everyone believed that Shen Ji was selling dead seeds.
Nineteen-year-old Shen Qinghe cut out a complete pale white embryo from the seed that had been stepped into the muddy water.
"It's not dead yet."
She did not guarantee that all the seeds could be saved, but only proposed a seven-day public inspection: taking samples from the mouth, middle and bottom of the bag; germinating a hundred seeds; keeping the samples and sealing them; and farmers witnessing them. Which ones are completely dead, which ones are weakened by moisture, and which ones are just waiting to wake up, must be distinguished one by one.
But the further down I go, the more something is wrong.
In the same bag, there were new seeds at the top but old seeds at the bottom; the seed bag had been retied; Shen remembered that the back door had been opened late at night; and her father, who had already noticed the abnormality, chose to remain silent.
But finding out who changed the seeds will not save the current spring plowing.
The whiteness in the pot does not mean that the field will survive; the test field taking root does not mean that there will be food in the autumn. The late spring, water supply, labor, land differences, compensation and wages all forced her to make a choice.
From the seven-day seed inspection to seedling cultivation, field trials, seed saving, and building a seed bank, Shen Qinghe wanted to save more than just a batch of seeds.
She wants every bag of seeds to have a provenance, every sample to have a testimony, and every person who guards, washes, and exposes the seeds to be named and paid. She also wants farmers to regain the right to choose how to live in the coming year.
