A post-70s camel herder in Jinchang shares his experience of making a fortune from camel farming

Recently, the reporter came to the Jinlongquan Dairy Camel Breeding Farmers' Professional Cooperative in Longjing Village, Ningyuanbao Town, Jinchuan District. Amid the clear sound of camel bells, Wu Binde, a post-70s farmer, approached the fence carrying fodder, and several camels immediately gathered around, affectionately bringing their heads close to their owner.

"Raising camels came about because of an illness my uncle had." Wu Binde said that after his uncle's surgery, he heard people say that camel milk has very high nutritional value, so he had the idea of raising camels, began gathering information online, and even went to **Fuhai County to investigate.

In 2014, he and Wang Desheng from the same village jointly initiated the establishment of the Jinlongquan Dairy Camel Breeding Farmers' Professional Cooperative, bringing other farming households into it and beginning large-scale breeding. To this day, the cooperative has more than 500 Bactrian camels, including 40 breeding female camels, and at the beginning of this year invested 1.2 million yuan to build a camel milk production and processing line.

"At present, our camel milk output is still very low." Wu Binde introduced his development plan to the reporter: "We are preparing to develop a camel park sightseeing and fruit-picking agritourism, where visitors can pick fresh fruit in our camel 'kingdom', eat farm meals, and ride camels, while gradually cultivating the consumer market for camel milk, producing and processing camel meat, and researching and developing camel milk beverages..."

It is understood that camel milk is hailed as "white gold of the desert", rich in high-quality protein, low in sugar and low in fat, and higher in nutritional value than cow's milk. Effective medicinal ingredients such as insulin can be extracted from camel milk, meat, and bones, and it has significant medical effects on diseases such as tuberculosis, diabetes, cancer, and AIDS.

Camel farming is one of the industries that Ningyuanbao Town has focused on supporting in recent years to promote the transformation and upgrading of the agricultural industry, and it is an emerging agricultural and livestock industry with local characteristics. Ningyuanbao Town has combined the advancement of the "Ten Districts Construction" with developing industries and strengthening the collective economy. By increasing investment, introducing supportive policies, accelerating base construction, developing a series of products, and improving scientific and technological support, it has raised the level of standardization, scale, and industrialization of camel farming, promoted the development of the camel industry, boosted the enthusiasm of camel farmers, and opened up new channels for farmers to become wealthy. At present, camel milk farming households in the whole town are mainly concentrated in Longjing Village.

Village committee director Liu Guoshuang told the reporter: "In order to make the camel farming industry develop rapidly, we organized the masses to go to **Altay Fuhai County for investigation and study, and actively sought relevant policy support." Now the village has built a camel farming base through the "base + professional cooperative + farming households" method and begun camel milk production. According to preliminary estimates, raising one dairy camel brings an annual net income of about 6,000 yuan.

Wu Binde said: "Starting a business is actually not that difficult. Many people lose out on persistence."

Holding fast to a dream without giving up, the post-70s camel herder finally has his reward.