College graduate runs a fly-maggot chicken farm, leading more than a hundred farming households to prosperity

In September 2006, news spread through Hengshangang in Qinglong Village, Zhuzhen Town, Liyang City that startled the whole village: Guo Xiang, a college student enrolled at Jiangsu Polytechnic College of Agriculture and Forestry, was going back to his hometown to start a fly-maggot chicken farm. Going back to the countryside to raise chickens, and raise fly maggots too? Many people in the village did not believe it. Eleven years have passed, and Guo Xiang's farm has basically got onto the right track. He also organized and founded the "Liyang City Yajishan Laying Hen Breeding Professional Cooperative," adopting a "company + cooperative + farming households" model to lead farmers in increasing their incomes scientifically.

Before graduating from university, he returned to the countryside to start a business

In 2006, the days of his internship were approaching, and Guo Xiang was extremely anxious. He wanted to start a business, to show what he could do and go all out, but he could not find a direction to break through. Just when Guo Xiang was at his wit's end, tormented by his dream, a chance experience pointed him the way.

By a lucky coincidence, Guo Xiang came to Changchun City, Jilin Province, just as the national agricultural expo, held once every three years, was taking place there. For Guo Xiang, who studied agriculture, such an opportunity was of course not to be missed. He looked around for three days and still wanted more, and an urge to start a business grew stronger and stronger. "Why not go to the countryside, to my own hometown, and try my luck?" This thought surged in his heart and would not settle for a long time. This idea of Guo Xiang's did not come out of thin air. What he studied at Jiangsu Polytechnic College of Agriculture and Forestry was exactly horticultural technology. Under the cultivation and influence of the college's "four-stage" work-study talent training program for the horticultural technology major and its teaching model integrating "teaching, learning and doing," Guo Xiang both improved his professional skills and learned a great deal of entrepreneurial knowledge and hands-on entrepreneurial experience. Through four years of professional study, practice and investigation, he discovered that traditional agriculture urgently needed innovation.

Running a tea plantation while at school, selling more than ten thousand in a single season

Guo Xiang said that choosing agriculture as his entrepreneurial path also benefited from his active participation during his student years in the college's production-training entrepreneurial club, contracting and operating it together with classmates. At that time the school had a plot of vacant land, provided free for students to use. Because tea was a signature project of the school, Guo Xiang and his classmates planted tea on this plot. From cultivating and picking the tea to selling it, everything was done independently by Guo Xiang and his classmates. They set up a stall on the entrepreneurship street very close to the school to sell it. At first, the tea did not sell well, but later, as their picking techniques improved and word of mouth spread, a single season of tea could bring in more than ten thousand yuan.

The small mountain village where Guo Xiang was born lies in hilly and mountainous terrain with no transport links, but in Guo Xiang's eyes these "backward conditions" were exactly the resources he needed to start a business. The pristine natural environment of his hometown happened to coincide with the ecological agriculture he advocated. Guo Xiang had already made up his mind: relying on his hometown's pristine environment, he would open a chicken farm and sell green eggs.

Leading more than a hundred farming households, he set up an ecological farm

Guo Xiang's laying hens are raised strictly according to green and organic food standards, so the feeding costs are relatively high, and the selling price is inevitably high as well. When he went out to sell eggs, customers all said that one of his green ecological eggs was about the price of a jin of ordinary eggs, too expensive. With more and more eggs, who would he sell them to? Where was the customer base?

He turned his gaze for help to his alma mater. The teachers at Jiangsu Polytechnic College of Agriculture and Forestry told him that first of all he had to ensure product quality, and at the same time he had to find ways to promote his farm. The teachers also suggested that he film the entire process of raising ecological chickens, because that would make it easier for customers and the market to accept. This method worked. Precisely because the egg white was tender and the yolk fragrant, Guo Xiang's chicken farm gradually became busy, with a steady stream of customers coming to buy eggs after hearing about it.

In 2008, Guo Xiang organized and founded the "Liyang City Yajishan Laying Hen Breeding Professional Cooperative" to lead farmers in increasing their incomes scientifically. Guo Xiang provided chicks, provided technology and provided feed, and finally took responsibility for buying back the products, reducing farmers' risks as much as possible. At present, more than 100 farming households in the surrounding area have joined the cooperative.