Jie Hai never forgets his original aspiration and bravely serves as the leader on the road to prosperity
Jie Hai, 39 years old this year, is a Tujia man born and raised locally. In December 1997 he enlisted in the military and served in the Yunnan Armed Police Border Defense Force, rising to the rank of a deputy battalion-level cadre. He once carried out a mission aiding Tibet and was awarded the Third-Class Merit 3 times. In 2010 he honorably retired from the military, ending nearly 13 years of army life and returning to his hometown, Yongshun. After 5 years of hard entrepreneurial struggle, he has carved out a world of his own, becoming a renowned livestock breeding and management expert in the whole county and the "leader" who drives his fellow villagers to prosperity.
Returning home to visit relatives, what he could not forget was the helpless look in the eyes of the villagers
In 1997, after enlisting, he was assigned to the Yunnan Border Defense Force. During that time he volunteered to go to the most arduous place, Tibet, and served in the Tibet forces for 8 years. In 2010 he honorably retired from the military. Without making any requests of the organization and giving up the "iron rice bowl" of a resettlement transfer to the prefecture tax bureau, he resolutely returned to Maoping Village, where he was born and raised, and founded a goat farm.
The child who once single-mindedly wanted to jump out of the farmer's gate, when everything was going smoothly in leaving "farming" behind, disregarded his family's complaints and opposition and firmly chose to return to the closed-off and poor mountain village, starting his business from zero. This truly required extraordinary courage and boldness.
Jie Hai said: "Every time I came home to visit relatives, when I saw how the faces of my fellow villagers had not changed for so many years, and saw the helpless eyes of the left-behind elderly and left-behind children one after another, my heart was deeply gripped. The military cultivated in me a firm character, an indomitable spirit, and a style of swift action and hard struggle. When I retired I also received a not insignificant resettlement payment. I felt the opportunity to realize my dream had come."
Starting the goat farm, nearly 600,000 yuan in resettlement funds almost went down the drain
Speaking of his entrepreneurial experience, Jie Hai sighed: "It really is hard to put into words!" After retiring and returning to his hometown, he founded a goat farm and put all of the more than 600,000 yuan in demobilization and resettlement funds into goat farming, beginning a arduous entrepreneurial path. He led two like-minded veteran comrades-in-arms to set up camp deep in the mountains, building pens, planting forage grass, grazing goats, and pondering breeding techniques. With the green mountains as companions and the flock as friends, through severe winter and scorching summer, he had no regrets. At the beginning, he spent more than 90,000 yuan to introduce more than 60 Boer goats from Shandong. Unexpectedly, Boer goats were not suitable for mountain grazing, and after a year, few of the more than 60 goats remained. Facing failure, he did not lose heart. He went successively to Hubei, Sichuan and other places to investigate and learn, reselected a batch of goats suited to local ecological grazing, and then crossbred them with local goats. After several years of breeding and practice, the crossbred goats grew well, had strong disease resistance, and adapted to the local ecological environment. In 2012, his farm was rated by the Ministry of Agriculture as a national-level standardized meat sheep breeding demonstration farm. Jie Hai's breeding business finally made substantial progress and improvement, and he himself became a widely known breeding expert in Yongshun County.
Having solved the technical problems, another difficulty stood before Jie Hai. Jie Hai faced the bottleneck of expanding the scale of his farm: the problem of funds. In 2012, the demobilization funds were spent. With his wife's support, he sold their commercial apartment in Jishou and rented a place to live. However, this money was only a drop in the bucket and simply could not maintain the normal operation of the farm. At this point of being at the end of his rope, the soldier's spirit of forging ahead and refusing to admit defeat supported him. He told himself: do not give up, and even more do not abandon; there are always more solutions than difficulties! In order to keep the farm going, at the worst moment he even went to work at a nearby mine to maintain the basic expenses of the goat farm. Fortunately, with strong support from departments such as the county People's Armed Forces Department, the Animal Husbandry Bureau, the Agricultural Comprehensive Development Office, and the Civil Affairs Bureau, he raised more than 3.8 million yuan in funds through various channels. Using this money, he founded Yongshun County Senbao Animal Husbandry Co., Ltd., barely sustaining the farm's scaled development. In 2014, through contacts made by leaders of the county People's Armed Forces Department, leaders of the Jishou Military Subdistrict conducted research at the base and successfully recommended an investment partner from Shenzhen, who was willing to invest 10 million yuan in stages to jointly build a high-end mutton brand and expand sales channels in coastal cities.
Teaching others to fish, he turned a poor mountain gully into a prosperous "goat kingdom"
After 6 years of development, at present the breeding scale of Jie Hai's farm has reached more than 1,300 goats, and annual income has increased from 100,000 yuan that year to more than 1.2 million yuan. As deputy secretary of the Maoping Village Party branch, on his own path to creating wealth, Jie Hai has never forgotten his childhood dream: to change the face of his hometown and lead his fellow villagers to prosperity together. In 2011, he took the lead in establishing a goat breeding professional cooperative, adopting a "company + farmers" model, purchasing back cooperative farmers' mutton at guaranteed prices, reducing breeding risks and raising farmers' confidence in breeding. At the same time, he held technical training classes on straw-based livestock raising, straw ammoniation and other techniques, imparting without reservation to the members the breeding techniques he had learned. Driven by Jie Hai, the surrounding people set off a upsurge in goat breeding. Members have grown to 65 households, radiating to more than 200 breeding households, with a total of more than 5,500 goats raised and annual sales revenue of more than 8 million yuan.
Jie Hai used local resource advantages to develop the breeding industry and established a breeding professional cooperative, playing a good demonstration and guiding role for local farmers engaged in breeding, and becoming the "leader" for local people to escape poverty and become rich. In 2013, he was selected as one of the top ten figures of "Moving Yongshun."
After seeing all the fine scenery of the journey, even better sights lie ahead. The black goats raised by Jie Hai on the high mountains and grown on green grass, because of their delicious meat and high nutritional value, have already captured the sales market in Yongshun and Jishou City, and have also established a certain sales and service network with surrounding counties and cities in Hunan, Hubei, Chongqing, Sichuan and Guizhou. The farm he founded has now become the largest breeding and supply base for Xiangxi Sichuan black goat breeding stock. On the mountainside, workers are building goat pens. The site follows the contours of the mountain and looks like a corridor stretching more than 100 m. Jie Hai's goat kingdom is expanding its territory step by step.
As the interview was about to end, a surprised shout came from the goat pen: "The goat is giving birth!" Hearing this, Jie Hai rushed to the pen and saw that a little lamb had already been born. He walked quietly to the mother goat's side and gently stroked her belly. One minute later, the mother goat successfully gave birth to a second lamb. Watching the mother goat lick the newborn baby goats with motherly love, watching the baby goats struggling to open their eyes, clumsily stretching their limbs, and stubbornly trying to stand up, a happy smile bloomed on Jie Hai's dark, lean face. On this land that gave birth to Jie Hai's life, it is also nurturing Jie Hai's dreams and hopes!