How Quan Hongmei, a capable woman at a pig farm, raises pigs well
Quanjiahe Village in Chengcheng County is a typical small mountain gully village. The village is located in a coal mining area, with many people and little land, and the land is barren, making it very difficult for the villagers to escape poverty and become prosperous. However, in recent years a "capable woman" in the village, Quan Hongmei, has become prosperous by raising pigs through her own wisdom and careful work. Not only has she become prosperous herself, she has also led the whole village to escape poverty and embark on the road to moderate prosperity.
In 1988, after graduating from vocational high school, Quan Hongmei returned to her original village and became a substitute teacher. Three years later, she married into Quanjiahe Village and continued teaching. A few years later, because the pay of a substitute teacher was too low and the whole family's life was difficult, she left the podium she loved. Back at home, Quan Hongmei carefully analysed the village's situation and decided to take advantage of the low-lying, relatively enclosed terrain of the mountain gully to develop rural livestock farming and carry out large-scale pig farming. After the second half of 2005, pig prices kept falling, and half of the 7,000 yuan she had initially invested was lost, which was a great loss for a mountain village farmer. This made her realise that, apart from mastering a certain amount of scientific and technical knowledge, livestock farming must also be market-oriented and grasp the laws of the market.
With the arrival of the trough in the livestock farming industry in 2006 and the spread of pig diseases on a nationwide scale, the national pig herd dropped sharply. Although market prices still tended to slide further, she firmly believed that pork prices would inevitably rise gradually, so she should seize this market opportunity and begin to greatly increase the number of piglets, raising the pig herd to more than 100 head and calling on the villagers to develop farming.
In the process of farming, she took the initiative to ask technicians for advice, bought a computer, and studied pig farming knowledge earnestly. She often kept watch in front of the pig pens, carefully observing the condition of each pig, promptly grasping all kinds of abnormal information, and when she found problems she promptly sought advice, promptly consulted relevant books and materials, and took correct measures. After long practice and exploration, Quan Hongmei finally mastered pig farming techniques and summed up her own set of practical pig-raising skills. The slaughter rate of the pigs she raised remained above 98%, and her annual income reached 150,000 yuan. Pig farming brought her substantial economic benefits, and her family quickly escaped poverty and became prosperous.
After more than ten years of struggling and striving in pig farming, Quan Hongmei already had her own farming experience. In 2011, she began to develop large-scale farming and build standardised pens, with a total investment of more than 2 million yuan, building new standardised pig houses. After founding the pig farm, she provided work for more than 10 idle rural labourers, including 2 professional technicians.
She also extended a helping hand to the villagers who had difficulty making a living, adopting the method of letting them take pigs home to raise and paying for the pigs when they were ready for slaughter, which both solved the problem of some people having no money to buy pigs and promoted the enthusiasm of the broad masses of people for raising pigs, while also increasing her own economic benefits. Relying on this spirit of working hard and studying assiduously, Quan Hongmei's pig farm reached an output value of about 10 million yuan, making her a truly famous large specialised pig-raising household near and far.
Now that she had become rich raising pigs herself, she could not forget the people around her, nor could she forget the ordinary folk travelling the road to prosperity. Quan Hongmei taught the pig-raising skills she had mastered, hand by hand, to many pig-raising households. Thanks to her "passing on, helping and guiding", the people of Yaotou Town were full of enthusiasm for raising pigs, enabling Yaotou Town's pig industry to rapidly become bigger and stronger. Moreover, thanks to her careful operation of the pig industry association, specialised pig-raising households in Yaotou Town sprang up like bamboo shoots after rain. More than 200 pig-raising households in the whole town and neighbouring villages had received her help, and in Yaotou Town alone there were more than 10 large pig-raising households.
She established an "association + farming households" relationship with the surrounding people, serving the broad masses of pig-raising households and providing all-round services through the role of the pig association. Today, under Quan Hongmei's leadership, invigorating agriculture through science and technology and becoming prosperous through science and technology have become a common practice throughout the village, and the people's enthusiasm for becoming prosperous through science and technology is growing stronger and stronger.