Paeonia Garden in Bin County Blooms with Flowers of Prosperity
During the Spring Equinox, more than a dozen villagers from Damaojiatun, Toudao Village, Jingjian Township, Bin County, sat around the heated kang stove at the home of "Paeonia King" Mao Xingdong, enthusiastically discussing each household's planting plans for this year. At present, more than ten households in this village have joined Mao Xingdong's prosperity team under the "one household, one product; one household, one strategy" approach, blazing a new path to prosperity in the village by transforming the planting structure.
The reporter learned that after 12 years of hard work, Mao Xingdong's paeonia garden has grown from the initial 8 mu to nearly 100 mu, cultivating more than 200 cold-resistant varieties. Fresh flowers are sold as far as Liaoning, Inner Mongolia, Russia and other places, and paeonia flowers produced by Mao Xingdong can also be seen at Harbin's Children's Park and Zhaolin Park. It is understood that the current wholesale price of a single paeonia flower on the market is 0.5 yuan; through dense cultivation, each mu can produce 7,500 paeonia flowers, with an output value of up to 3,750 yuan, which alone is three to four times higher than ordinary crops. In addition, after four consecutive years of planting, paeonia roots can generate an income of 24,000 yuan per mu.
Mao Xingdong told the reporter that Bin County is a major corn-growing county, and every household has traditionally been accustomed to growing corn. A few years ago, corn prices were high, and growing corn brought a net income of about 1,000 yuan per mu, so few people dared to take the risk of planting other cash crops. In 2016, after the state abolished the temporary corn storage price, corn prices fell sharply, and the profitability of growing corn was far worse than before. Therefore, in the past two years, more and more villagers have recognized Mao Xingdong's planting direction and are willing to work alongside him.
As the prosperity leader of Toudao Village, Mao Xingdong makes full use of his spare time to "recharge," going out to understand the market and learn specialized planting and breeding techniques, then passing on the skills he has learned to the villagers upon returning.
Regarding the future, Mao Xingdong is full of confidence. He said that as the paeonia garden's fame grows, the number of tourists coming to admire it increases year by year, and the increase in tourists will inevitably boost dining and accommodation. Therefore, Mao Xingdong organizes villagers to take families as units and, during the peak tourist season, arrange for tourists to stay directly in villagers' homes. Tourists like to eat farmhouse dishes and free-range chickens, so Mao Xingdong organizes each household to trial-plant asparagus, daylily, fern, wood ear mushroom and other cash crops at their doorsteps, and after successful trials, these are promoted for large-scale planting in the fields.
Villager Chu Liguo said: "I started cooperating with Mao Xingdong to grow paeonia in 2014. After receiving several groups of guests, I found that city people truly love this rural life. As the number of tourists increased, I launched a telephone reservation service. Tourists can order dishes over the phone, and I prepare them in advance. Free-range chickens, free-range geese and wild vegetables that city people love to eat are all available here. Now, there are several other farmhouse restaurants like mine in the village, all making a living from paeonia flowers."
Villager Wang Lidong said that when corn prices fell last year, the county organized farmers to collectively study courses on cash crop planting techniques and adjusting the planting structure, and he also began to change his thinking. This year, he joined Mao Xingdong's "one household, one product; one household, one strategy" prosperity team. Mao Xingdong brought asparagus seeds and taught him how to raise seedlings. Now, Wang Lidong's asparagus seedlings have been successfully cultivated, and the next step is to transplant them into the fields.
In recent years, Bin County has attached great importance to agricultural structural adjustment. In 2017, in accordance with the overall requirements of "reduce corn, increase rice, expand soybeans, expand fruits and vegetables, and develop livestock," Bin County will optimize the agricultural planting structure and regional layout, focusing on advancing five major prosperity projects: the "Green Vegetables Prosper the People Project," the "Soybean Revitalization Project," the "Golden Leaf Prosper the People Project," the "Green Mountains Prosper the People Project," and the "Miscellaneous Grains and Beans Project," striving to reduce the corn planting area to within 2 million mu.