Chinese College Students Dive into Agricultural Entrepreneurship, Cultivating Dreams Is Becoming a Trend
“I earned 1 million yuan by the time I was 27.” The Huang Chao before my eyes was dark and thin, his trousers and shoes covered in mud, yet his words carried a tone of confidence.
Huang Chao, now 30 years old, is from Hubei and graduated from Shanxi Agricultural University in 2008. When he was just a junior, he contracted greenhouses in the rural areas around the school to grow edible fungi and start his business. After graduating, he did not go out to work like his classmates, but stayed in the countryside to continue his edible fungi venture. Now he runs his own agricultural cooperative and also travels across Shanxi to provide technical guidance to farmers.
The agricultural entrepreneurship that Huang Chao is engaged in has seized on two keywords of China's current development. Chinese leaders have repeatedly encouraged young people to start businesses on public occasions, and the 2015 government work report also pointed out the need to promote mass entrepreneurship and innovation.
Agriculture, moreover, is a top priority that bears on China's development. With China's economic development, urbanisation and changes in population structure, many young and able-bodied rural workers have left the countryside. To solve the problem of who will farm the land in the future, China's "No. 1 Central Document" has focused on agriculture for 12 consecutive years, issuing a series of policies to benefit and support agriculture. Many college students, especially those from agricultural universities, have spotted this opportunity and are poised to act.
Eighteen kilometres from Shanxi Agricultural University lies a college student entrepreneurship park covering nearly 1000 mu. On this land there are 19 entrepreneurial teams in total. They grow strawberries, honeysuckle, high-quality forage grass, edible fungi, daisies and more, cultivating their own entrepreneurial dreams.
Ma Hongjun is a senior in the College of Agriculture at Shanxi Agricultural University, and his team has planted 3 greenhouses here. Right now the strawberries in the greenhouses are growing beautifully, and people come to pick them from time to time. "Agriculture has excellent prospects; it is an industry that will never decline, and entrepreneurship is a very passionate undertaking. Combining agriculture with entrepreneurship means combining hope with passion!" Ma Hongjun applied to the school for land to grow cherry tomatoes as soon as he was a freshman. After failing, he continued to work with others, and now he has finally set up his own entrepreneurial team.
Xie Shengjie is also a senior in the College of Agriculture at Shanxi Agricultural University. Last April he moved into the entrepreneurship park and rented a greenhouse to grow melons.
When the reporter saw him, he was working in the greenhouse, his clothes clinging to his back, his skin tanned dark. Xie Shengjie said his parents are farmers too, and the education he received from childhood was that farming does not make money and that he should leave the countryside in the future by getting into university, while his parents also worked away from home all year round. Yet now he does not think that way. "We are different from them. We are modern farmers who understand technology and know how to operate and manage. As long as there is investment and the scale is expanded, we will definitely make money!"
Duan Xutao, a freshman, comes to the greenhouses to help from time to time. "My wings are not strong enough yet. I will learn as much as I can while I can, and in the future I want to start a business too!" he said.
The surging wave of college student entrepreneurship cannot be separated from the school's cultivation and support. As the only local agricultural institution in Shanxi, Shanxi Agricultural University uses innovation and entrepreneurship to drive the transformation of its talent training model, providing whole-process training and assistance in entrepreneurial awareness, improvement of entrepreneurial ability, incubation of entrepreneurial projects and support for graduates.
"Some people think these 'post-90s' kids are just briefly enthusiastic and will not be able to keep going once they taste a bit of hardship, but their performance in entrepreneurial practice has overturned people's traditional views." Shi Yangling, Party Secretary of Shanxi Agricultural University, said that through entrepreneurship training, students not only master the skills to make a living, but also cultivate a spirit of hard struggle and the courage to take on challenges, as well as the ability to learn on their own initiative.
In order to make entrepreneurship education and services more systematic and institutionalised, Shanxi Agricultural University last year became the first among China's agricultural institutions to establish an entrepreneurship college, integrating resources and coordinating student entrepreneurship education, the building of entrepreneurship bases and the building of entrepreneurship parks, so as to cultivate agricultural entrepreneurial talent.