The Black Grape King grows prosperity fruit, the "Big Fool" brings a fortune-making story to life

Zhang Minghong, now in his early forties, is an ordinary farmer in Team Four of the Taihe Overseas Chinese Farm in Binchuan County, Dali Bai Autonomous Prefecture. Beyond that, he holds many titles: chairman of the Binchuan County Xinghongda Agricultural and Sideline Products Professional Cooperative, president of the Binchuan Hongyu Fruit and Vegetable Association, chairman of Binchuan Linfeng Trading Co., Ltd., grape demonstration estate (vice president) of the Binchuan Branch of the Yunnan Provincial Experts Association, and executive committee member of the Binchuan County Federation of Industry and Commerce.

Of course, compared with these titles, what shines brightest about Zhang Minghong is still that nickname - Black Grape King. This is the foundation of all his honors, raising an ordinary farmer's income per mu from 600 yuan to nearly 10,000 yuan. Dali Prefecture's prosperity-bringing "golden fruit" centered on Binchuan - Binchuan selenium-enriched grapes - has also been exported to Southeast Asian countries such as Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Myanmar.

20 years ago, Zhang Minghong came to Binchuan from Zhaotong City. He saw that the villagers did not understand science and technology, production was backward, and life was hard, and he felt very uneasy about it. "I must learn more agricultural technology, spread agricultural technology, change the poverty and backwardness of the countryside, and let the villagers earn more money and big money." Zhang Minghong made up his mind secretly, and then began to seriously study agricultural technical knowledge. He bought books and subscribed to newspapers, consulted all kinds of materials, went to the county seat to attend various lectures on agricultural knowledge, visited agricultural experts, and often spent high prices to buy some crop varieties to experiment with in his own contracted fields...

However, his family did not understand him. He spent so much money going to school and learning knowledge, yet farming not only did not earn more money than others, but actually kept losing money. Some villagers laughed at him for being foolish, saying that all that knowledge was learned in vain, and that in farming he was no better than those of us who could not read a single character. What use was learning knowledge? Some people even gave Zhang Minghong a nickname, calling him "Zhang the Big Fool."

Amid the criticism, "Zhang the Big Fool" not only did not compromise, but a year later, carrying his dream, he went alone to Shandong to investigate and learn grape-growing techniques. After completing his studies and returning, he introduced Red Globe grapes and trial-planted them in his own two mu of contracted fields, while at the same time promoting them among acquaintances by signing fresh fruit buyback agreements.

But just as before, with this challenge to traditional agricultural methods, relatives and friends all advised him not to take the risk. After all, at that time Binchuan could still grow vegetables and citrus, but there was no precedent for growing grapes. Zhang Minghong paid no attention to this, however, and withstood the pressure, becoming the first person in Binchuan to "eat the crab" by planting grapes.

"I took a huge risk and bore a lot of blame, but the income from selling grape seedlings alone reached more than 20,000 yuan. This was my first bucket of gold." Whenever he talks about it, Zhang Minghong is filled with emotion.

Zhang Minghong was the first to plant Red Globe grapes at the Taihe Farm in Binchuan. By 1999, the Red Globe grapes he had introduced and promoted had grown to 8 mu, by 2000 to 40 mu, and in 2002, farmers across the county, under his guidance and instruction, had developed a total of 800 mu of Red Globe grapes. In 2003, Zhang Minghong began selling the recovered Red Globe grapes to Vietnam, Malaysia, and Singapore. That year, more than 600 tons of grapes were traded through entrepot trade, and afterward this rose year by year, reaching 4,000 tons by 2014. Zhang Minghong also built cold storage, a sales department for special organic fertilizer for grapes, and other supporting facilities, vigorously promoted high-tech selenium-containing organic fertilizer cultivation techniques, and cultivated selenium-enriched grapes with a selenium content reaching 50mg/100mg...

Zhang Minghong is still the person in the villagers' eyes who does not follow the rules, but he, who firmly believes in science and technology and that heaven rewards diligence, has finally become more and more successful on the path of grape growing. Today, grapes have become a calling card of Binchuan County, and the story of "Zhang the Big Fool" has also become an inspirational example.

"I must learn more agricultural technology, spread agricultural technology, change the poverty and backwardness of the countryside, and let the villagers earn more money and big money." Zhang Minghong, who was among the first to get rich, did not forget this original determination. In 2012, he founded Binchuan Linfeng Trading Co., Ltd. and established a farmers' professional cooperative integrating a planting base, grape processing, farmer membership, and industrialized development, positioning its production and operation model as "enterprise + base + cooperative + farmers," actively guiding and driving farmers to become wealthy and increasing farmers' incomes.

At present, the cooperative's members have grown from 7 households at the time of its founding to 186 households, with members spread across 10 townships and towns and 3 overseas Chinese communities throughout the county. In Waxi Village of Daying Town alone, members who joined the cooperative have developed 3,000 mu of grapes, and Dongyi Village of Jizushan Town has developed 2,000 mu. The 3,000-mu selenium-enriched grape science and technology demonstration park established by the enterprise has already driven 2,130 farmer households, directly driving nearly 10,000 mu of grape planting area, with the average annual grape income per household reaching more than 60,000 yuan. It has indirectly driven 30,000 farmer households and driven 50,000 mu of grape planting, playing a leading role in Binchuan's industrial development and making the contribution a private enterprise should make to leading and creating organic agricultural product production bases and advancing the development of modern new agriculture.