Inner Mongolia: Taking Shangdu Vegetables to the International Market (Photo)
[Introduction·China Vegetable Network]At the 13th China International Agricultural Trade Fair held this year in Fuzhou, the “Xinxuan” celery of the Xinlei Vegetable Professional Cooperative of Shangdu County won the gold award for exhibited products, and at the same time, “Xinxuan” brand potatoes were selected into the “National Hundred Cooperatives Hundred Agricultural Product Brands”. This is the only product in our city to receive this honor.
At the 13th China International Agricultural Trade Fair held this year in Fuzhou, the “Xinxuan” celery of the Xinlei Vegetable Professional Cooperative of Shangdu County won the gold award for exhibited products, and at the same time, “Xinxuan” brand potatoes were selected into the “National Hundred Cooperatives Hundred Agricultural Product Brands”. This is the only product in our city to receive this honor, and these honors made Gu Shoujiang, head of the Xinlei Vegetable Professional Cooperative of Shangdu County, extremely excited.
When it comes to “Xinxuan” celery and the Xinlei Vegetable Professional Cooperative, Gu Shoujiang speaks of them with great familiarity. “Now our Xinlei Vegetable Professional Cooperative is developing better and better, and the vegetables we grow have gained everyone's recognition. Winning these two awards is an honor for me, and even more a challenge. From now on I must cherish this trust even more and grow better vegetables that satisfy consumers even more.”
Speaking of the original intention behind founding the cooperative, Gu Shoujiang was full of emotion. At the time, Gu Shoujiang was still an accountant in the county. Once, on the way back to the village from a trip to the countryside, he encountered farmers selling celery at a very low price, already below the cost of growing vegetables. Because the price was too low, many people in the village simply let the vegetables rot in the fields rather than harvest them. Seeing this, he was heartbroken, so he organized a six-person team in the village and hauled 40,000 jin of celery to Zhengzhou, Henan. Unexpectedly, these vegetables all sold out in less than a day, and the price was more than double what they would have sold for locally. That first experience of going to market remains vivid in Gu Shoujiang's memory to this day. After tasting success, many young people in the village began going to market to sell local vegetables. Seeing the business opportunity here, Gu Shoujiang organized people from three villages to establish the Xinlei Vegetable Distribution Department. Every year in July, they would fan out to various places to promote vegetables. As the scale of operations expanded, in 2010, on the basis of the distribution department, Gu Shoujiang founded the Xinlei Vegetable Professional Cooperative.
As the leader, Gu Shoujiang was determined to take the market as the guide and growing green vegetables as the goal, leading the villagers to prosperity together. The cooperative has 1,500 mu of demonstration land, all of which has undergone farmland improvement, turning dry land into irrigated land. If farmers are willing to contract land, it is leased back to them at below-market prices, and farmers can also join the cooperative by contributing land as shares, with a free system for joining and withdrawing. Cooperative members enjoy priority access to wholesale prices for seeds and fertilizer, and there are technicians providing guidance throughout the entire process before, during and after planting. The vegetables are sold to Zhengzhou, Xuzhou, Anhui, Beijing and other places. “Now we practice large-scale planting. From planting area, seeds, planting techniques, fertilization and product sales channels, we all follow his arrangements. This year the highest price for one mu of celery can reach 10,000 yuan, and it sells especially well.” When cooperative members talk about the cooperative and about Gu Shoujiang, they are full of trust and pride. Because it is precisely under Gu Shoujiang's leadership that they have explored a path of agricultural development integrating production, supply and marketing, and 540 member households have increased their income by growing vegetables and now live lives like city people.
The Shangdu County Party Committee and government have given strong support to the Xinlei Vegetable Professional Cooperative, creating conditions for the cooperative as much as possible and promoting its healthy development. The 70-mu warehousing and processing base of the Xinlei Vegetable Professional Cooperative was provided free of charge by the county government. A Party member activity room was also built, and every year technicians from the Agriculture and Animal Husbandry Bureau are invited to teach cooperative members, teaching them vegetable-growing techniques.
Speaking of the cooperative's future development, Gu Shoujiang was full of confidence. He said: “Our vegetables all use farmyard manure, and what we produce is all green food. At the same time, due to the influence of special natural conditions, the vegetables we grow are still very fresh after being left for two or three days. With these advantages of favorable timing and location, my next step is to take our Shangdu vegetables to the international market, exporting to Mongolia, Russia and other places. By then our ‘Xinxuan’ vegetables will certainly become more and more famous, and our income will rise higher and higher like sesame flowers blooming ever upward.”