Growing Small Chili Peppers, Li Caizhi Paves a Road to Prosperity
In mid-May, at the base of Hubei Pengbo Ecological Agriculture Co., Ltd., the lush green chili seedlings were growing vigorously.
Li Caizhi, over 7 years, achieved a perfect transformation from a vegetable vendor to the head of a private enterprise integrating selenium-enriched chili cultivation, processing and sales. "I want to make 'Li Lazi' a household name like 'Lao Gan Ma'." Li Caizhi, born in the 1980s, is full of confidence.
After returning home from military service, Li Caizhi ran a China Mobile service agency and did a clothing business, but unexpectedly spotted a business opportunity in chili peppers. In 2010, a merchant from Sichuan hoped Li Caizhi would help purchase chili peppers, and by reselling the peppers from villagers to the customer he earned 0.6 yuan per jin. The next year, he began renting land to build a chili planting base, and 300 mu of chili peppers produced an output value of 1.2 million yuan.
Establishing a chili professional cooperative, Li Caizhi went door to door to persuade people, signing purchase contracts with villagers at the beginning of the year, developing through the farmer + base + professional cooperative model. Today, the company has signed contracts with more than 5,000 farming households across eight counties and cities in the prefecture, with a contracted area of more than 80,000 mu and an annual output value of more than 50 million yuan.
In 2014, Hubei Pengbo Ecological Agriculture Co., Ltd. was rated as a key leading enterprise in agricultural industrialization in Xuan'en County, and in 2015 it was rated as a "2015 Advanced Enterprise in Project Construction" in Xuan'en County.
"We cannot only think of getting rich ourselves; we must also help our fellow villagers stand tall and fill their pockets, and make this land that raised us 'spicy'." This is Li Caizhi's goal.
To stimulate the planting enthusiasm of impoverished households, the company established a base development industry assistance command center, arranging more than 30 people to provide point-to-point assistance to impoverished households and freely providing them with seeds, pesticides, organic fertilizer, plastic film and other materials and technology. When prices are high, the market price prevails; when prices are low, purchases are made at a protective price. In 9 impoverished villages including Maocunzi, Chayuan and Qingshuitang, 1,846 impoverished households planted 6,782 mu of chili peppers, and more than 100 people achieved employment at their doorstep.
From selling dried chili peppers to selling chili sauce. How to shift from rough processing to deep processing to increase product added value has been a question Li Caizhi has always pondered. In 2015, the company built two hot-air multi-layer flip-plate automated chili baking production lines, one neat hot-air multi-layer flip-plate automated chili baking production line and a cold storage freezer of nearly 1,000 cubic meters, capable of processing more than 50,000 tons of fresh peppers annually; in 2016, the company also introduced a set of intelligent color sorters, a set of intelligent air separators and automatic stem removers, making dried chili peppers into chili sauce. Today, under the "Li Lazi" trademark there are dried, fresh and pickled chili product series, and an ecological organic agricultural product deep-processing production line has been completed and put into operation.
With the goals of increasing agricultural efficiency and farmers' income, relying on the construction of standardized bases and using professional cooperatives as a link, Pengbo Ecology focuses on building bases, expanding markets, ensuring safety and creating brands, actively advancing the development of agricultural industrialization.