Sichuan Hongyuan Returnee Herder's Path to Wealth: Combining Planting and Breeding for an Annual Income of Over 400,000 Yuan
Photo shows Zerang Duoerji working in the grass storage facility.
Photo shows Zerang Duoerji's greenhouse, livestock pens and grass storage facility.
Photo shows Zerang Duoerji teaching local herders the path to wealth.
In early spring, Hongyuan is blanketed in white snow. On the 16th, at a grassland in Da'e Village, Waqie Town, herders crowded in to learn about and purchase fodder. The owner of the grassland is named Zerang Duoerji, a representative figure among Hongyuan County herders in achieving prosperity.
Many years ago, Zerang Duoerji was a herder who specialized in raising yaks. Due to Hongyuan's harsh climate conditions, the problem of fodder for yaks to survive the winter had always been a persistent worry for herders. Later, an opportunity took Zerang Duoerji to Germany, France and other countries and regions with developed livestock industries. Through his investigations, he found that the foreign practice of both raising livestock and growing forage grass was very well suited to Hongyuan's environment.
Developing from single livestock raising to combining planting and breeding became Zerang Duoerji's practice after returning to China. Over several years, his ranch has formed a diversified development pattern combining livestock raising and grass industry operations, exploring a "production-processing-sales" business model integrating forage grass cultivation, management, harvesting and storage, and sales, achieving standardized and large-scale forage grass production.
Zerang Duoerji introduced that currently his family has 425 yaks and 32 improved cattle, contracts 3,200 mu of grassland, and rents over 9,800 mu of grassland from surrounding herding households. It is expected that within the year, 210,000 kg of green hay can be harvested and stored, achieving an output value of over 400,000 yuan.
Zerang Duoerji's exploration has played a positive demonstrative and driving role for surrounding herding households in developing the grass industry, and is even more a microcosm of Hongyuan County's development of modern animal husbandry. In recent years, Hongyuan has extensively promoted and applied modern agricultural science and technology and equipment, vigorously promoting and popularizing basic and practical technologies and equipment such as livestock breed improvement, agricultural and pastoral mechanization, grassland improvement and artificial grass planting, and disease prevention and control. It has integrated pilot demonstrations of a batch of new modern agricultural varieties, new technologies and new equipment that are urgently needed for production and have high technological content. It has developed new technologies for processing, storage, grading and packaging of agricultural and livestock products in pastoral areas, guided enterprises and business entities to carry out production, processing and circulation in accordance with relevant technical specifications and technical standards, and established a standardized product production and operation system.