Xiangxi's Woman Pig Farmer Returns Home to Start a Pig Farming Business, Leading Villagers Out of Poverty Toward Prosperity
Industrial poverty alleviation is a way of teaching people to fish, and is the fundamental path and long-term strategy for stable escape from poverty and the pursuit of prosperity. On March 8, 2017, the "Escaping Poverty and Achieving Prosperity in Hunan" Xiangxi reporting team entered Xiangxi Prefecture, focusing on how local villagers were achieving poverty alleviation step by step, and sharing experiences and insights on industrial poverty alleviation.
Putting Effort into Specialty Industries
Xiangxi's "Mulan" Leads Fellow Villagers to Prosperity Through Pig Farming
On the morning of March 8, Long Yingzu, a villager from Shibadong Village in Huayuan County, Xiangxi, was busy feeding more than 300 piglets. Among them were Xiangxi's specialty breed - Xiangxi black pigs - happily eating their "breakfast." "Sows need to be fed once in the morning and once in the evening, while piglets can eat freely." As soon as Long Yingzu started talking about pig farming experience, she couldn't stop.
Such rich pig farming experience stems from her time working in Huanghua Town, Changsha. In 1997, she was harvesting late rice for a large pig farming household in Changsha, and discovered that the family had a house, a car, and a pig farm with more than 1000 pigs. She silently urged herself to work hard. She took the initiative to stay and work feeding pigs, and after five years of working and learning, she learned comprehensive breeding techniques including diagnosing and treating pig illnesses, castration, and administering preventive injections.
Even so, she still had not fundamentally improved her life. In 2002, she gave up her salary of 3000 yuan per month, resigned, and returned home to start a business. As time passed, her skills became more refined and her business grew larger. By the end of 2003, income from piglet sales and breeding services reached 72,000 yuan, and she achieved escape from poverty and prosperity.
At the entrance of the pig shed, the two characters "Mulan" in "Huayuan County Shibadong Mulan Piglet Farm" caught the reporter's attention. When asked why she chose this name, she was delighted, laughing and saying it was to express the hope that women can strive for self-improvement and bravely pursue and create. That is what she believes, and that is what she does. As the village's women's director, Long Yingzu, while raising pigs herself, did not forget to lead fellow villagers to work together.
Shibadong Village resident Long Shiqing raised nearly 50 pigs at Long Yingzu's place last year, and last year's returns were also very good, selling for around 30,000 to 40,000 yuan. Including Long Shiqing, Long Yingzu has led 21 households with 81 people in the village to raise pigs together and prosper together. Specialty breeding has become a major tool for Shibadong Village's escape from poverty.
Developing specialty industries has become an important part of deepening industrial poverty alleviation. In mid-February 2016, Minister of Agriculture Han Changfu said during a survey in Xiangxi that "Xiangxi Prefecture has a very good ecological environment and rich natural resources. It should build on its advantages and develop specialty agricultural industries suited to local conditions." Considering the prefecture's actual conditions and years of experience, Xiangxi identified 8 major specialty industries - citrus, tea, tobacco leaves, kiwifruit, vegetables, oil tea, Chinese medicinal materials, and specialty breeding (black pigs, yellow cattle) - as the prefecture's agricultural specialty industries, achieving differentiated competition and staggered development.
Not only in Xiangxi, but all of Hunan Province also focused on putting effort into developing specialty industries for poverty alleviation. The provincial level invested a total of 500 million yuan in fiscal poverty alleviation funds, implemented 86 key industrial projects, and directly helped 200,000 impoverished people develop production. The province added 9.35 billion yuan in small poverty alleviation loans, helping 230,000 poor households develop industries. Photovoltaic poverty alleviation pilots were carried out in 556 poor villages across 60 counties. Rural tourism poverty alleviation was carried out in 30 counties across the province, absorbing 400 million yuan in various funds and benefiting more than 60,000 impoverished people.
Innovating Poverty Alleviation Approaches
Old Farmer Lives a Happy Life Relying on "Orders"
In Shuanglong Village, Shuanglong Town, Huayuan County, Xiangxi, Shi Jinyin was busy smoking bacon in his brand-new house. Since Huatian Industrial Holding Group Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Huatian Group") began village assistance in 2015, Shi Jinyin's home-smoked bacon and home-grown vegetables have had a stable market. In the very year Huatian Group began village assistance, his house was renovated and he also escaped poverty.
"Agricultural products couldn't fetch a good price before." Speaking of the time before the village assistance, Shi Jinyin looked distressed. He said his family had 2.5 mu of land, and although they planted rice and corn and raised pigs, cattle, and sheep, the annual income was only just over 2000 yuan. "Our village is also remote from the outside, which is very unfavorable for sales."
In the May 2016 "Shuanglong Village Villager Industry Order," the reporter saw that Shi Jinyin planned to raise 3 cattle and 20 sheep, plant 1 mu of red bolt (first half of the year), plant 1 mu of chili peppers (second half of the year), and smoke 30 jin of bacon. Huatian Group would purchase according to the "Purchasing Quality Standards for Agricultural and Sideline Products" at prices slightly above market price.
Wang Heyou, leader of the Huatian Group poverty alleviation task force stationed in Shuanglong Village, told reporters that Shuanglong Village residents provide agricultural and sideline products according to order requirements, constituting Shuanglong Village's "order agriculture." Through the order sales model, Shi Jinyin's life became increasingly prosperous, with per capita net income rising from 1900 yuan in 2014 to 4500 yuan in 2016. Shi Jinyin also receives a retired cadre subsidy of 150 yuan per month, and his life keeps getting better.
"Order" agriculture is a way of innovating poverty alleviation. The more underdeveloped a region is, the more it needs to implement an innovation-driven development strategy.
Tian Kehu, director of the Xiangxi Prefecture Agriculture Committee, said that Xiangxi Prefecture implements policies tailored to the actual poverty causes of poor households. On the basis of providing a certain amount of direct assistance funds to poor households with labor but lacking capital and technology, it also vigorously promotes entrusted assistance. For the large number of poor households with no labor capacity or insufficient labor, it implements entrusted assistance by entrusting land and other production factors to leading enterprises, specialized cooperatives, family farms, and other new agricultural operating entities for unified operation, with returns shared proportionally.
Hunan is also giving full play to the functional role of modern industrial parks, guiding poor farmers to participate in park construction through various methods such as starting businesses in the parks or finding nearby employment, and sharing in the benefits of specialty industries. On the other hand, it encourages leading enterprises, cooperatives, family farms, and other emerging operating entities to absorb poor households' production factors and project subsidy funds as shares in share-based poverty alleviation, adopting various forms such as entrustment and shares to help and drive poor households out of poverty.
Over the past three years, Hunan has created a series of replicable experiences, including the new "four follow four walk" industrial poverty alleviation path: "funds follow the poor, the poor follow the capable, the capable follow industrial projects, and industrial projects follow the market." It has Hunan characteristics and highlights, and the results are very obvious. From 2014 to 2016, a total of 229 key industrial poverty alleviation projects were implemented, with 1.75 billion yuan invested in fiscal funds, 5.62 billion yuan in other integrated funds, 690 participating enterprises and cooperatives, helping 1.62 million impoverished people increase their income.