Guidong's "Fruit and Vegetable King" Huang Wenbin: Rich but never forgets his fellow villagers

He was once an ordinary migrant worker, supporting his family on a meager income. Now, having returned home to start a business, he has not only founded a company and established an ecological vegetable professional cooperative, but also obtained 5 inventions and 11 patents, and in 2015 was named one of the "Top Ten Entrepreneurial Youths of Guidong" - he is Huang Wenbin, the "Fruit and Vegetable King" of Zhaijian Town, Guidong County, who has led 110 farming households to prosperity together.

In the fruit and vegetable base of the Fuzhu Ecological Vegetable Professional Cooperative in Zhaijian Town, rows of neatly arranged red globe grape vines are laden with fruit, and Huang Wenbin and his wife are pruning the branches and leaves.

In 2008, due to the impact of the financial crisis, Huang Wenbin, who was working in Jieyang, Guangdong, returned to his hometown and embarked on his own entrepreneurial path.

After returning home, Huang Wenbin found that vegetable prices in Guidong were relatively high. Through talking with vendors, he learned that most of Guidong's vegetables were brought in from other places, so he wrote a report and submitted it to the local government, hoping to develop vegetable cultivation. The idea of growing vegetables was affirmed by the relevant departments. Huang Wenbin attended the first batch of new-type professional farmer training in Chenzhou City and partnered with others to found Guidong County Shanliqing Modern Agricultural Science and Technology Development Co., Ltd. In March 2011, Huang Wenbin began trying to grow peppers, but due to a lack of technology and experience, the peppers he grew did not sell well. Wholesalers thought the pepper varieties were too limited and refused to buy them. The peppers, grown on 200 mu of land and totaling nearly 900,000 jin, went unsold, resulting in a direct loss of more than 700,000 yuan.

His enthusiasm was doused with a bucket of cold water, but Huang Wenbin was not discouraged in the least. In order to diversify fruit and vegetable varieties, he established an ecological professional cooperative in 2011. When it was first founded, the villagers did not trust the cooperative. They took their good-looking, high-quality vegetables to the market to sell at high prices and kept the leftovers to sell to the cooperative. To win the villagers' trust, Huang Wenbin patiently went to the villagers' homes time and again to communicate with them, taught them some of his entrepreneurial experience, and helped the villagers sell their goods. As the cooperative developed better and better, goods were no longer stockpiled, money was earned, and the villagers finally felt reassured.

However, Huang Wenbin was not satisfied with this. He led his team in continuous research, overcoming one difficulty after another, and finally obtained 11 patents, including for watermelon row pressing and ginger sprouting, as well as 5 inventions in fruit and vegetable cultivation, making planting methods more technological, gradually lowering labor costs, and continuously improving the yield and quality of fruit and vegetable cultivation. For example, ginger yield went from 2,000 jin per mu with the old planting method to 8,000 jin per mu, and the villagers were all delighted.

"My entrepreneurship has received tremendous support from the government. Not only did they help us build greenhouses for facility construction, but they also regularly organize fruit and vegetable cultivation training. This is truly wonderful for me!" Huang Wenbin said with a smile.

Now the cooperative already has a vegetable base of 630 mu and has absorbed 110 farming households across the county, including quite a few impoverished families. In order to help the villagers achieve prosperity together, Huang Wenbin, after discussing with the cooperative, decided to give fertilizer, seeds, seedlings and more to impoverished villagers free of charge. The cooperative also regularly organizes training for the villagers, covering fruit and vegetable cultivation, base management, product purchasing...