Industrialized operation makes agriculture strong; in the work on agriculture, rural areas and farmers, not one of the goals of strong, beautiful and prosperous can be left out
“The greenhouse grapes in our village all hit the market early, and the price is far higher than ‘cold shed’ and ‘open-air’ grapes. A shed of less than 1 mu can bring in more than 50,000 yuan!” A few days ago, villager Yu Zhiping of Shilipu Village, Shilipu Township, Changli County, Hebei Province, told reporters with a smile that now basically the whole village is engaged in greenhouse grapes, with an annual output of more than 2,000 tons.
At present, the greenhouse grape planting area in Shilipu Township has reached 2,300 mu, realizing an output value of 50 million yuan. At the same time, the township has vigorously developed grape culture rural tourism and continuously extended the industrial chain, enabling many farmers to make a “gorgeous transformation” into agritainment owners or scenic spot employees, with a per capita annual net income of nearly 20,000 yuan, becoming a microcosm of the county’s “three rural” work advancing toward “strong, beautiful and prosperous.”
Industrialized operation makes agriculture strong
Changli is a large county dominated by agriculture. Affected by factors such as thin soil, drought and water shortage, and water and fertilizer leakage, most land has low production capacity, seriously restricting agricultural efficiency improvement and farmers’ income growth. Therefore, based on characteristics such as being near mountains, bordering the sea, having much land and local climate conditions, the county has carried out scientific planning and rational layout, actively guiding farmers to transform from traditional planting and breeding models to modern agricultural models such as efficient planting, specialty breeding and mariculture, gradually forming five major specialty industrial clusters: wine grape brewing, marine products, sweet potato vermicelli, fresh-eating sweet corn and specialty breeding, involving 423 enterprises and driving more than 100,000 farming households into employment.
At the same time, through measures such as unified planning, unified supply of improved varieties, unified technical guidance and unified disease prevention and treatment, the county supports farmers in specialized production. Through support and guidance, agricultural product production in Changli County has achieved specialized production with targeted direction, quantity and quality, which not only creates basic conditions for deep processing of agricultural products, but also lays a solid foundation for farmers’ stable income growth.
Taking the introduction of leading enterprises and the development of deep processing of agricultural products as important means to strengthen the county and enrich farmers, the county continuously optimizes the investment environment, adopts a full-process tracking service model, and works both to strengthen local grassroots enterprises and to introduce advantageous enterprises from elsewhere. At the same time, more than 1,000 agricultural product processing enterprises have adopted the “enterprise + base + farmer” business model, realizing the connection between small production by thousands of households and the large market.
At present, the county has developed more than 400 deep-processing enterprises for agricultural products, with an agricultural industrialization rate of 65%. Among them, the wine industry has introduced more than 20 enterprises such as COFCO Huaxia, while also building more than 20 specialty wineries. Driven by advantageous enterprises, the county’s wine industry now possesses 15 advanced international and domestic technologies. At present, Changli County dry red wine is exported to more than 20 countries and regions including the United Kingdom, France and the United States.
Rural appearance renovation makes villages beautiful
With economic and social development, more and more farmers have embarked on the road to prosperity, but the surrounding environment has quietly changed, and environmental problems have become increasingly prominent. In order to thoroughly change the rural appearance of “modern indoors, dirty and messy outdoors,” in recent years the county has vigorously carried out a series of activities to change the rural environmental appearance, including hardening rural roads, building activity squares, accelerating afforestation and greening, and integrating sanitation management, striving to make villages beautiful.
⟦NL> “In the past, when there was no farm work or after meals and there was nothing to do, people would gossip about one family or another, or play mahjong. Now it is different. The village has a library and a fitness culture square. Young people can read and study, and the elderly and children can also stroll and exercise in the square.” At the cultural activity square of Huangtuwan Village, Dapuhe Town, the dance “Love of a Spicy Girl” was being passionately performed. Villager Mu Shaoxian said that not only that, but the phenomena of sewage flowing everywhere and garbage all over the ground in the village can no longer be seen, and villagers’ awareness of protecting the environment has become stronger and stronger. Living in such a village is absolutely a kind of enjoyment.
Like many villages, a few years ago Huangtuwan Village was just an ordinary small village, and the village environment could even be described as “dust all over you on sunny days and mud all over you on rainy days; garbage relies on the wind to blow it away and sewage relies on evaporation.” In recent years, the village has organically combined multiple activities such as the creation of civilized ecological villages, deepening the Year of Strengthening Grassroots Construction, and the improvement and upgrading of rural appearance. Taking “four cleanups and four transformations” as a breakthrough, it has repaired roads, carried out greening, improved water supply and upgraded toilets, and also creatively transformed a pond covering nearly 3,000 sq m, where garbage had accumulated for many years and water pollution was serious, into an ecological landscape within the village. Today’s Huangtuwan Village, shaded by trees and covered with flowers and plants, presents a beautiful modern rural scene of clean environment, complete facilities, pastoral scenery and comfortable livability.
Cultivating specialty industries makes farmers prosperous
In building a new countryside, development is the core and industry is the foundation. Only when production develops can the new countryside turn from a “blueprint on paper” into “reality on the ground.” Therefore, the county seizes the opportunity of national policies supporting agriculture and benefiting farmers, takes agricultural structural adjustment as the main line, relies on abundant agricultural resource advantages, and vigorously cultivates specialty industries such as efficient planting, specialty breeding and labor economy, filling farmers’ pockets. In 2013, the county’s per capita net income of farmers reached more than 10,000 yuan.
For many years, the county has adhered to relying on bases and being market-oriented, continuously adjusting the planting structure, and actively guiding farmers to develop the planting of vegetables and seasonal fruits and melons such as greenhouse cucumbers, strawberries, nectarines and grapes, as well as sweet corn planting and other specialty industries, so that the land generates income in all four seasons. At present, the county’s protected vegetable area has developed to 198,000 mu, and many efficient planting specialized villages have emerged, including Mafangying, Liulizhuang, Wujiatao and Shilipu. At the same time, as a major county for livestock breeding and mariculture in the province, it has formed a development pattern of “regional layout, large-scale breeding, specialized production and industrialized operation,” with more than 200 specialty breeding villages emerging, driving more than 50,000 farming households onto the road to prosperity through specialty breeding.
In addition, it also expands export channels in multiple directions within the county, outside the county and overseas, vigorously developing the “labor economy,” enabling more and more surplus laborers to realize their dream of employment. At present, the county has more than 20,000 “amphibious farmers” who “busy themselves with farm work after work and enter workshops when at work,” achieving a win-win of increased farmer income and private enterprise development.