How downy grape opens the door to higher incomes for farmers

Living off the mountains does not always prove reliable. The mountainous area of Luocheng Mulao Autonomous County in Guangxi, in northern Guangxi, is just such a place where the land struggles to support its people. This county, the only Mulao autonomous county in China, has karst terrain accounting for 53% of its total area, with severe rocky desertification in the mountains, and the wild downy grape vines sprawling at random over the rocks are its only "resource."

For thousands of years, downy grapes grew wild across the hills and were left to fend for themselves. When Yu Chenglong, the "model official of his generation," served as magistrate of Luocheng, he encouraged local ethnic minority villagers to brew wine from wild fruit instead of grain, and only then did downy grape begin to be put to use, though it was still limited to farmers brewing for their own consumption. It is only in recent years that this small wild fruit, sour with a distinctive sweetness, has opened the door to prosperity and become the "poverty-alleviation fruit" for the poor.

Who judged the value of downy grape most accurately? Wei Xianwang, the "crazy old man" of Lile Village in Sipa Town.

"Actually, it wasn't that I had such good judgment; I was forced into it," said 55-year-old Wei Xianwang. With so much mountain and so little land, and crops planted in cracks between rocks unable to reach any scale, it was common to plant a whole hillside and harvest only a basketful, while developing livestock farming was too far from the market. So he had no choice but to go into the county town to learn a trade, repairing bicycles on the street. Wei Xianwang never expected that the downy grape wine farmers brewed for themselves would also be popular in the city. His mountain village lacked everything, but it certainly did not lack downy grapes; they were all over the hills.

Recognizing the potential of downy grape and having done the detailed calculations, Wei Xianwang returned to the village in 2001 and traded his family's only 3 mu of good farmland with a neighbor for 50 mu of rocky mountain land. In Lile Village, where land was worth its weight in gold, everyone thought Wei Xianwang had "gone crazy."

From then on, the villagers watched as the "crazy" Wei Xianwang threw himself onto the rocky mountain, digging pits in rock crevices, setting up posts, planting seedlings and pruning branches. Downy grape seedlings gathered from all directions onto the rocky mountain and became a vineyard. In spring the tender buds sprouted green, in summer there was a stretch of shade, and in golden autumn the fruit hung heavy; after three or four years the downy grapes entered their full-production period.

What is the biggest worry in specialty farming? It is sales, yet Wei Xianwang never fretted. A winery in the county town consumed about 8,000 tons of downy grapes each year, and traders from nearby Du'an, Yongfu and other counties kept coming to buy them. "Over the years, downy grapes have never gone unsold, with average annual income of 70,000 to 80,000 yuan, far better than repairing bicycles in the county town back then."

The successful experiment of the "crazy old man" Wei Xianwang spurred on local villagers. Today, more than one third of the 150 households in his hamlet grow downy grapes.

Li Nailiu, an agronomist with the Luocheng County Fruit Bureau, told reporters that the root system of downy grape vines is very well developed and can grip even thin soil, effectively controlling soil erosion, which gives it an important ecological role in rocky desertification areas. At the same time, downy grape is also a "poverty-alleviation fruit," priced at 3 to 4 yuan per jin on the market, with a yield of more than 1,000 jin per mu and income of more than 3,000 yuan per mu.

The local Party committee and government guide farmers in developing poverty-alleviation industries, and downy grape is a uniquely distinctive project. In 2004, experts from the Guangxi Academy of Agricultural Sciences, taking local conditions into account, bred the bisexual-flowered "Yeniang No. 2," which does not require pollination, greatly reducing the labor costs of cultivation.

Last year, Wei Xianwang replanted all his unisexual-flowered downy grapes with "Yeniang No. 2." "The hardest part back then was pollinating the flowers, stumbling over the rocky mountain with one deep step and one shallow step, unable even to stand steady. With a better variety available, of course I had to switch."

Wei Xianwang was injured in his youth and has a mild disability. Wei Feng'ang, two years younger than him, built an even larger vineyard, creating a "legend" of annual income of one million yuan among the rock crevices.

The reporter visited Wei Feng'ang's "super vineyard" and saw three contiguous barren hills with severe rocky desertification covered with downy grapes, the tender buds showing traces of green, and cement posts standing on the large expanses of exposed gray-brown rock, with crisscrossing wire on top like a "spider web." "It's all downy grapes, more than 300 mu," Wei Feng'ang said, pointing to the vines. "Once summer comes, the whole hillside turns green, and many people from the county town drive out here to visit."

While showing the reporter around the downy grape vineyard, Wei Feng'ang did the accounts: gross income of more than 1 million yuan a year. "I don't keep all that money myself. I hire poor households from the village to help with pruning, and during busy times I have to hire 60 or 70 people, paying 85 yuan per person per day, which comes to 200,000 to 300,000 yuan a year."

In Luocheng County, the tiny downy grape is opening the door to prosperity for the poor. More than 5,000 farming households across the county grow nearly 80,000 mu of downy grapes. Relying on this "poverty-alleviation fruit" growing from rock crevices, more than 2,200 poor households with 8,800 people have embarked on the path out of poverty, and early this year another 1,500-plus poor households signed up to grow downy grapes.

The head of the county poverty alleviation office introduced that to encourage poor households to develop the downy grape industry, the county finance department provides 600 yuan per mu in material subsidies, including seedlings, cement posts and wire. "Poor households need to invest only a little over 2,000 yuan per mu, and after 3 years the downy grapes enter the full-production period. One-time investment, long-term returns."

Luocheng County head Pan Qiulin said that although downy grapes are currently not going unsold, given the continuously expanding planting scale, the county is planning ahead to bring in another beverage factory to expand the sales channels for fresh downy grapes and ensure the industry is properly connected with the market.

The downy grape industry is a microcosm of industrial poverty alleviation in Hechi City, where Luocheng County is located. Hechi is one of the cities in Guangxi with the widest poverty coverage and the deepest poverty. To enable poor people to gain "self-renewing capacity" through industrial development, during the "13th Five-Year Plan" period the local government will build "ten million-level industries," including 1 million mu of "three special" fruit, 1 million mu of high-yield oil tea, and a 1 million mu longevity ecological selenium-rich agricultural product base. "These industries all target market 'gaps,' and through supply-side reform they enhance the distinctiveness and brand value of agricultural products, driving poor people out of poverty toward prosperity," said Hu Ge, head of the Hechi City Poverty Alleviation Office.