Oil peonies pave the road to prosperity for big grower Fei Xinke

Fei Xinke and management staff busy at the base

Bromeliads inside a standardized smart greenhouse

Walking among the crowd, unassuming and plain, with simple, crisp short hair, he is always energetically shuttling around the peony planting base in Yuncheng County, Heze. When Fei Xinke passes you by, you cannot help but want to stop and get to know him, and to learn the story of how he grew oil peonies and became wealthy.

Oil peonies become a "flower of prosperity"

Stepping into Matun Village, Wu'an Town, Yuncheng County, the first thing that comes into view is Fei Xinke's busy figure at the planting base. Stretches of oil peonies are verdant and dripping with green, and crops such as peanuts and edamame are intercropped in the peony fields. Like many oil crops, the seeds of oil peonies can be used to produce edible oil; they belong to woody nut edible oils and have extremely high economic value.

Fei Xinke is a well-known large-scale oil peony grower and a capable man praised by everyone in the villages around. On the premise of mastering planting techniques, he has grown oil peonies on a large scale, and relying on good cultivation techniques and product quality, he has accumulated a large number of stable customers and has a certain influence in the domestic flower market.

Regarding the development prospects of oil peony fields, Fei Xinke told Dazhong.com reporters: Good wine needs no bush; if you make good things, you need not worry that they will not sell.

Bend your head and throw yourself into it, learn and grow through experience

By chance, Fei Xinke learned that oil peonies had huge room for development. After comparing local soil and climate conditions, Fei Xinke found that Matun Village was very suitable for peony planting, so he secretly made up his mind to dare to be first and to carve out a path of distinctive agricultural development through oil peonies. He went many times to oil peony planting bases in Luoyang, Henan, Bozhou, Anhui and other places to investigate information such as the uses, market prospects, planting benefits, planting techniques, intercropping models and product processing of oil peonies.

At the beginning, Fei Xinke's career did not go smoothly. Peonies are planted from September to October and only bear fruit in the third year. Fei Xinke told Dazhong.com reporters: "After planting the seedlings, you cannot earn a single cent for two or three years, and it feels not worth it." However, in the face of difficulties, Fei Xinke did not lose heart. After seeking verification from many sources, he found that a three-dimensional planting model could solve this problem. Therefore, he decided to carry out intercropping and relay intercropping in the peony fields for three-dimensional development. Because oil peonies like shade and cannot tolerate high temperatures, and tend to wither and die when encountering high temperatures, he intercropped tall green landscaping woody crops between the rows of peony seedlings, and also intercropped crops such as soybeans and edamame between the rows of peony seedlings, which was not only beneficial to the growth of the peonies but also solved the problem of having no income from planting peonies alone in the first 3 years.

Support policies reach the fields, growers rejoice

In recent years, the vigorous development of the domestic oil peony industry has attracted great attention from Party and state leaders. Xi Jinping, Li Keqiang, Wang Yang and other central leaders have successively made important instructions on developing the oil peony industry, elevating its development to a national strategy. In 2012, the State Forestry Administration listed Heze City as a pilot area for the national oil peony production base. Because of the rich business opportunities and development potential contained in the oil peony industry, it has received great attention from the Heze Municipal Party Committee and Municipal Government, which have vigorously implemented the "Shandong Province Peony Industry Development Plan (2015-2020)" and actively promoted oil peony projects.

The state's growing attention to the development of oil peonies and other woody oil industries has brought new opportunities for the development of the oil peony industry. At present, Fei Xinke's oil peony field planting scale has reached 4500 mu, making it the planting base with the earliest oil peony planting, the best growth and the most advanced technology in southwestern Shandong and even across the country.

With passion, displaying his strengths, repeated successes on the road of peony intercropping

In 2008, Fei Xinke established Yuncheng County Sunshine Flowers Co., Ltd. After 9 years of development, it has now become a private agricultural high-tech enterprise with registered capital of 22 million yuan and appraised total assets of 456 million yuan, in which Shandong Provincial Financial Investment Group Co., Ltd. and Shandong Academy of Agricultural Sciences provide key support. In 2012, the state encouraged accelerating the development of the woody oil industry. Under the guidance of the peony industry offices at the two levels of Heze City and Yuncheng County, Fei Xinke began planting oil peonies. Up to now, the oil peony planting area has reached more than 4500 mu.

In 2016, Yuncheng County Sunshine Flowers Co., Ltd., founded by Fei Xinke, was successfully listed on the technology board of the Qilu Equity Exchange Center.

Fei Xinke told Dazhong.com reporters that being extraordinary means doing simple things well, and being uncommon means repeatedly doing ordinary things well. Like Fei Xinke, the construction of oil peony bases has led the development of Heze's emerging agricultural industrialization, and they have built a "golden bridge to prosperity" in the oil peony fields.

Full of enthusiasm to help fellow villagers

"If one person becomes rich, that is not prosperity; only when everyone becomes rich is it prosperity." This is Fei Xinke's wish and also the direction of his efforts. Fei Xinke is not only a leader in becoming rich, but also a veritable "good person."

Dazhong.com reporters learned that the land of the planting base is all transferred from villagers, and then local villagers are hired to work at the base, which can provide employment for more than 1000 people on average each year.

"Better than farming by myself," this is the personal experience of Xu Fubin, a villager from Matun Village, Wu'an Town, Yuncheng County, who currently serves as a management staff member in the north area of the oil peony base. Speaking of Fei Xinke, Xu Fubin told Dazhong.com reporters, "Here we do not have the distinction between boss and employee; sometimes we even order old Fei around to work."

In the eyes of the villagers, Fei Xinke is an active practitioner in developing Heze's peony industry, a responsible leader in helping farming households become rich, and a well-deserved "good person," leading the villagers further and further on the road toward a better life.