In the early days of the founding of New China, the manufacturing industry was weak, and most rural areas still used cattle plowing to carry out agricultural production. In order to change this situation, the country began to vigorously develop the agricultural machinery manufacturing industry, and tractors became the vanguard of agricultural mechanization. When formulating the first five-year plan for the development of the national economy, the construction of the first tractor manufacturing plant was included in the 156 key engineering projects. In 1954, Chairman Mao Zedong set the site of the first tractor manufacturing plant in New China in Luoyang, Henan. On October 1, 1955, the first tractor manufacturing plant broke ground in Luoyang, Henan.
On July 20, 1958, the first Dongfanghong tractor was born, marking the end of China's history of not being able to manufacture tractors on a large scale. After the tractor was produced, there were repeated discussions about its naming. At that time, when An Daoping, then deputy director of the First Tractor Factory Office, went to discuss the name of the tractor with relevant officials in Luoyang City, he heard someone in the factory singing the Shaanxi folk song "Dongfanghong", so he decided to name the tractor "Dongfanghong".
In November 1959, the first batch of 13 "Dongfanghong 54 crawler tractors" arrived at the Beidahuang Military Farm in Heilongjiang Province. A special welcome ceremony was held at that time. The female tractor driver Liang Jun jumped on a tractor and drove in the front. She became the first female tractor driver in China. This scene was photographed by a reporter at the time and became the source of the pattern on the one-yuan coin of the third set of RMB in China.
As the first generation of China's agricultural machinery industry, the Dongfanghong 54 crawler tractor created a record of 31 years without major repairs during its service in Erlongshan Farm, Bei'an, Heilongjiang Province, in an extremely difficult and high-intensity operating environment. According to incomplete statistics, before the reform and opening up, Dongfanghong tractors completed more than 60% of the machine-cultivated land in the country.
In the 1980s, after the implementation of the household contract responsibility system, the sales of Dongfanghong crawler tractors declined, and China First Tractor began the road of market-oriented transformation and development. In 1983, the Dongfanghong 15 small four-wheel tractor, which was "priced at one cow and had the strength of eight cows", entered the market in batches and was welcomed by farmers. After that, China First Tractor insisted on independent research and development and mastered the large-wheel tractor technology with independent intellectual property rights. In 2014, my country's first commercial power shift tractor was launched; subsequently, the first domestic continuously variable heavy-duty tractor was successfully developed, ending the history of my country's heavy-duty tractors with more than 350 horsepower having to be imported.
In recent years, Dongfanghong tractors have also been constantly innovating and developing. In January 2019, the "Super Tractor I" won the title of "China's first electric unmanned tractor". First Tractor also made efforts in collaborative innovation and took the lead in establishing the Henan Agricultural Machinery Innovation Center, gathering high-quality innovation resources, developing customized chips and operating systems for intelligent agricultural machinery, and creating an independent and controllable Chinese agricultural machinery innovation system.
Today, the Dongfanghong series of products have been exported to more than 150 countries and regions, becoming a beautiful landscape of "Chinese creation" advancing into the "Belt and Road". Its products cover three categories: crawler tractors, wheeled tractor series and harvesting machinery, including tractors of various models and specifications to meet the needs of different users. For example, the Dongfanghong-C1802E rubber crawler tractor can be used for large-scale farmland operations such as plowing, leveling, harrowing and sowing; the Dongfanghong-MY1004S series products are suitable for complex operations such as water and dry land rotary tillage, plowing, harrowing, deep loosening and transportation; the Dongfanghong-4YZJ-4B self-propelled corn harvester has efficient operating capabilities, etc.
Dongfanghong tractor is not only a brand, but also an important promoter and witness of the development of agricultural mechanization in China. It carries the expectations and efforts of the Chinese people for agricultural modernization and has made important contributions to China's agricultural development and food security.