Tiny black wood ear mushrooms become a new calling card for poverty alleviation and prosperity in Yanbian, Jilin

Wood ear mushroom industry demonstration base

International Online News (Reporters Li Xianglan, Ma Yue): Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in Jilin Province has a long history of cultivating black wood ear mushrooms, and Tianqiaoling Town in Wangqing County is a well-known local "hometown of black wood ear mushrooms." Starting in the 1990s, Tianqiaoling Town developed a distinctive economy suited to local conditions and grew its black wood ear mushroom industry, and in 2014 it was designated as a production base of the national-level black wood ear mushroom safety production demonstration zone.

Tianqiaoling Town is a typical mountainous small town, and because of its large population and limited arable land, farmers found it difficult to escape poverty and achieve prosperity relying solely on farmland. Over the years, with government guidance and support, the black wood ear mushroom industry has been built into a pillar industry of Tianqiaoling Town's rural economy, and the black wood ear mushroom industry is also shifting from a high-energy-consuming, household-based small workshop mode of production toward an energy-saving, large-scale direction.

Today, Tianqiaoling Town has developed into the largest black wood ear mushroom production base in Yanbian Prefecture, with 16 cooperatives mainly engaged in black wood ear mushrooms in the town and more than 1,000 members. The town has already built 1 spawn bag factory with a daily production capacity of 80,000 bags and 3 spawn bag factories with a daily production capacity of 30,000 bags. There are as many as 12 centralized placement bases with a placement capacity of more than 5 million bags; the black wood ear mushroom trading market can accommodate more than 200 business owners.

Tianqiaoling Town leverages internet platforms to vigorously develop e-commerce transactions. Kong Lingjun, an employee of Tiancheng Agricultural Service Co., Ltd., which provides an e-commerce service platform, said, "In order to adapt to the modern agricultural product market, in 2015 the company joined hands with an exchange to establish an online electronic spot trading platform for agricultural products, conducting online advance sales and same-goods cross-region transactions of black wood ear mushrooms and other agricultural products through the internet. Logistics has now been opened to regions such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. In 2016, the trading volume of agricultural and sideline products mainly consisting of black wood ear mushrooms reached 16,000 tons, achieving a transaction value of about 800 million yuan."

Tianqiaoling black wood ear mushroom production base

Wood ear mushroom farmers picking mushrooms

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Cultivating black wood ear mushrooms with spawn bags

Drying wood ear mushrooms

Kong Lingjun, an employee of Wangqing County Tiancheng Agricultural Service Co., Ltd., introducing the e-commerce platform

Black wood ear mushroom wholesale distribution center

Liu Xifeng, head of the Shanghe Forestry Farm of the Tianqiaoling Forestry Bureau, introducing how black wood ear mushrooms have become one of the main projects in forestry transformation