Northern Shaanxi Jujube King Shares Experience of Growing Jujubes to Get Rich
In the deeply gullied region of northern Shaanxi, in Jiaxian County, Yulin City, the hometown of the folk song "The East Is Red," there is Wu Zisheng, praised as the "Northern Shaanxi Jujube King," a well-known local self-taught expert. Wu Zisheng lives in Wujiamao Village on the banks of the Yellow River and is the village's Party branch secretary. All 1,600 mu of cultivated land in the village is covered with jujube groves, and in a normal year the per capita jujube income in the village reaches more than 5,000 yuan, making it a well-known specialized jujube village.
"Wu Zisheng is hardworking and loves to study things deeply; he is our 'self-taught expert.' He led farmers to innovate in jujube production technology, making jujube production in Wujiamao and surrounding villages stand out with high and abundant yields. He took the lead in establishing a jujube cooperative to help us jujube farmers increase our incomes and become well-off," the villagers said in their assessment of Wu Zisheng.
Jiaxian County is a major jujube-producing county in Shaanxi Province and one of the five major jujube-producing areas in the country, with a history of jujube cultivation of more than 3,000 years. Because of their large size, fresh flesh and rich nutrition, the jujubes of Jiaxian County are praised as "woody grain," "iron-rod crops" and "living vitamin pills." In May 2001, Jiaxian County was awarded the title of "China's Famous Jujube Township" by the State Forestry Administration. Jiaxian jujubes obtained green food certification in August 2003, and in 2009 they also obtained an agricultural product geographical indication registration certificate issued by the Ministry of Agriculture.
Jiaxian County is located on the banks of the Yellow River, and its humid climate is suitable for the growth of high-quality jujubes, but at the same time this is also an area where insect pests run rampant in spring and summer and jujubes are prone to disease. This has caused endless trouble for the jujube farmers who rely on jujubes to get rich.
Facing various pests and diseases, Wu Zisheng conducted repeated experiments, selected suitable pesticides and spraying methods for timely control, and went from door to door teaching the masses control techniques hand by hand. One year the spring and summer weather was abnormal and pests and diseases were rampant, causing large-scale reductions in jujube yields in Jiaxian County. Wu Zisheng stayed day and night in the jujube groves, using his original pruning, pest control and fertilization techniques to deal with the pests and diseases, and ultimately overcame them all. The jujube fruit-cracking rate in Wujiamao and surrounding villages was also far lower than in other areas, with an average yield of more than 1,200 jin per mu.
"In 2015, Wu Zisheng researched and innovated a high-yield jujube management technique involving lowering tree height, thinning branches and yield-measured pruning, transforming old jujube groves so that the rate of superior jujube fruit rose from the original 30% to 70%, and the output value tripled compared with before," said a staff member of the Jiaxian County Science and Technology Bureau. This technique was named "Strong Height Reduction and Shape Molding," won the 2015 Yulin City Science and Technology Achievement Award, and was vigorously promoted in the Jiaxian jujube area, with 40,000 mu of jujube groves transformed over the year.
The household-based dispersed management model was restricting the quality and efficiency of the jujube industry. In 2007, Wu Zisheng took the lead in establishing the Jiaxian Thousand-Year Jujube Grove Jujube Industry Cooperative and registered the "Thousand-Year Oil Jujube" brand. The cooperative is composed of more than 240 jujube-farming households from the village and neighboring villages. It carries out unified management and comprehensive services for all stages of jujube production, processing and sales, conducts experiments such as "Strong Height Reduction and Shape Molding" and greenhouse jujubes, applies unified packaging, unified standards, a registered unified brand and a unified guided price to jujube products, creates organic jujubes, and establishes an e-commerce service platform to help jujube farmers sell their jujubes. The cooperative has also invested in building large baking ovens and cold storage equipment, and uses unique technology to produce more than a dozen varieties of jujube products, which are widely favored by the market, with annual jujube processing reaching 3 million kg.
"Driven and served by the cooperative, the jujubes produced in Wujiamao and surrounding villages not only fetch a good price, but the jujube farmers have also mastered high-yield techniques, helping more than 30 poor households in the cooperative escape poverty," Wu Zisheng said with particular delight when speaking of lifting farmers out of poverty. In the autumn of 2015, the cooperative held the Jiaxian Jujube Picking Festival in Wujiamao Village and signed a number of purchase and sales agreements. The Thousand-Year Jujube Grove Jujube Industry Cooperative has become a modern jujube demonstration base integrating science and technology demonstration, technical training, processing and sales, and tourism.
Wu Zisheng also voluntarily serves as a jujube technical service instructor in Jiaxian County, training cadres and masses tens of thousands of person-times, participating in various jujube seminars, and busily rushing back and forth tirelessly. Wu Zisheng said: "Making more jujubes 'red' and leading the broad masses of jujube farmers along the Yellow River onto the road to prosperity is where my dream lies."