A woman recieves her 3000-yuan loan from a branch of China Rural Credit Cooperatives Union in Kaiyang, Guizhou province in this file photo taken in 2006. [Photo/Xinhua]

The credit union now has over 4,000 loan officers like Jin, who together extended loans totaling 91.3 billion yuan in the first nine months of this year alone, a 25 percent increase from the same period last year.

The size of the loans varied greatly, going from 1 million yuan to as low as 200 yuan.

After building up a credit profile with the lender, farmers can get loans with little, or even no, collateral.

Being able to borrow at all can be a huge boost to local farmers, given that Chinese law stipulates land and produce cannot be used as collateral.

A glowing example of the system working well is Zhang Jinlong, a farmer from Leishan county. He says he would never have been able to own his 42 hectare tea plantation farm if he hadn't been given credit.

"It had always been my dream to own a farm. I wouldn't have got this size of loan if I had borrowed from a commercial bank, but my good credit record with the credit union helped me secure the loan," he said.

Zhang's farm now employs more than 1,000 people during harvest time, and he has become one of the richest in Leishan county.

"It was really a win-win situation, and the loan made what wouldn't have happened, happen," he adds.

For smaller loans, lenders can be given money almost as soon as they fill in an application.

Long Jun, another member of the Miao ethnic group from Leishan country, said her 1,000 yuan loan from the cooperative saved her brother's life last year.

"He was really sick and the hospital said it wouldn't treat him unless I paid the bill upfront," said Long. "The cooperative has become a very important part of our life here."

To further reduce defaults, the cooperative has a system in which individual credit records are bound together and ratings are given for villages, counties and even townships.

If one farmer fails to repay a loan, not only is his own credit rating affected, but also the whole village is affected, making loans for everyone pricier and creating what the organization calls "mutual supervision".

So far, the lender has approved 238 "credit-worthy" townships, 5,740 credit-worthy villages and even 36,958 credit-worthy groups of individual lenders.