The entrepreneurial story of Wang Xiaochen, a young man born in the 1980s from Baoqing County
Strawberries at 100 yuan per jin! In Baoqing, this price is really no tall tale. During the 2017 Spring Festival, the greenhouse strawberries grown by Wang Xiaochen, a young man born in the 1980s from Gaojia Village in Baoqing Town, sold for exactly this price.
Walking into the greenhouse, a large expanse of verdant seedlings is dotted with ruby-like strawberries, full of spring vitality. Wang Xiaochen says this is where his dream took off.
Wang Xiaochen, now 33 years old, was like other villagers a few years ago, planting some corn and soybeans every year, busy year after year without seeing any increase in income. He began to ponder: how could he earn a bit more money? Wang Xiaochen's maternal grandmother's home is in Donggang City, Liaoning Province. Before he married, he often went to his grandmother's place to play, and strawberry-growing greenhouses could be seen everywhere there. He felt that since both places are in the north, if Liaoning can grow them, Baoqing certainly can too. Although it is a bit colder than there, he could just install a boiler in the greenhouse. So he began to entertain the idea of pursuing specialty cultivation.
Wang Xiaochen's idea won his father's support. So he went alone to Liaoning and spent two years specifically learning greenhouse strawberry cultivation techniques. In 2015, having completed his training, Wang Xiaochen raised funds from various sources and invested 320,000 yuan to build a 1,200 sq m greenhouse.
Specialty cultivation is all about the "specialty." Wang Xiaochen felt that since everyone is now striving to build organic, green, and pollution-free green agriculture, strawberries could do the same. Wang Xiaochen purchased more than 1,400 Hongyan 99 strawberry seedlings in one go for planting. He collected cow dung and sheep dung from the village's livestock farmers and fermented them into natural farmyard manure; he dug a well in the greenhouse and irrigated with pure groundwater; he adopted ecological sterilization methods, achieving a seedling survival rate of about 95%; he placed a box of bees in the greenhouse for natural pollination.
After diligent labor, near the end of the year, the strawberries came onto the market, priced at 50 yuan per jin! Wang Xiaochen used WeChat Moments for promotion, and citizens gradually drove to the strawberry garden to experience picking. Just like that, word spread from one to ten and from ten to a hundred, and the news that Gaojia Village had a purely green strawberry garden got around. That year Wang Xiaochen generated an income of more than 200,000 yuan.
Wang Xiaochen did the math for us. He said: "Growing grain crops yields a net income of at most 1,000 yuan per mu, while the strawberry greenhouse, on one mu and two fen of land, brought in more than 200,000 yuan in the first year. The farmyard manure was given free by the village's livestock farmers, which also solved the problem of piling up cow dung and sheep dung. When planting seedlings, I hire a few temporary workers; the rest of the time, my wife, my parents, and I, four people in total, are completely enough, and it didn't delay our crop planting."
Having gotten a taste of success, Wang Xiaochen decided to expand the scale. In June 2016, he invested more than 200,000 yuan to build another greenhouse and plant the Zhangji variety. Because he now had experience, the construction of the second greenhouse avoided many detours and saved a considerable amount of money. The second greenhouse's strawberries bore fruit in January 2017. As the Spring Festival approached, strawberry sales became brisk, and prices rose with the tide, soaring all the way to 100 yuan per jin. Even at such a high price, demand once exceeded supply. This greenhouse of strawberries earned Wang Xiaochen nearly 100,000 yuan in three months. At present, the strawberries in both greenhouses are growing beautifully and bearing abundant fruit, and the strawberry price has stabilized after the New Year at 35 yuan per jin.
During the interview, we happened to meet a citizen who had driven from Baoqing county town to make a purchase. Ms. Li said: "Today I brought my child to experience it and buy some pure natural strawberries. Many fruits on the market now are sprayed with chemicals, and I don't feel at ease giving them to my child. These strawberries are from right outside our own doorstep, so we naturally feel at ease eating them."
Speaking of his entrepreneurial experience, Wang Xiaochen said: "There is now a strong push to adjust the planting structure and grow cash crops to increase income. I never expected that my entrepreneurial idea from two years ago would coincide with this development direction. Since starting my business, the town, the village, and the village's first secretary have given me tremendous help, enabling me to successfully take the first step toward wealth and increased income."
Cheng Xuedong, first secretary of Gaojia Village, stated: "Gaojia Village takes agricultural supply-side reform as an important lever for increasing farmers' income, leading and driving the development of specialty industries, and farmers have found a path to wealth. Next, Gaojia Village plans to develop the cultivation of organic green strawberries into the village's specialty industry, form a professional cooperative, and drive more villagers to prosperity."