Pig farmer Li Xiaogang ushers in a happy year thanks to pig farming
"Life is getting better and better, and I really have to thank today's good policies!" Li Xiaogang, who lives in Jiantian Village, Yangxi Town, Anfu County, said happily recently. This Spring Festival, his family moved into a new three-story house, and their pockets are fuller too. He told reporters that because of pig farming, he finally shed the "poverty hat" and even became the village's model for escaping poverty. Now life is going to get better and better.
Li Xiaogang is 42 this year. There are 5 people in his family, but he is the only laborer. Two children are in school, his mother is nearly seventy, and his wife has suffered from severe systemic lupus erythematosus since 2010 and has lost her ability to work. Just treating her illness costs more than ten thousand yuan every year, making an already not well-off family even worse off, and the construction of their newly built one-story house was forced to stop. In order to earn money to treat his wife, in 2015, when he saw that his wife's condition had improved slightly, he followed the village's migrant work group out to find work. But because he had no education and lacked skills, he did not earn much money over the year, and life was visibly getting harder and harder.
In early 2016, Yangxi Town sounded the charge in the battle against poverty, increased poverty alleviation efforts, and vigorously promoted industrial poverty alleviation, financial poverty alleviation, photovoltaic industry poverty alleviation, employment poverty alleviation, and fund integration, building poverty alleviation models such as "industry + poor households" and "cooperatives + poor households." After seeing Li Xiaogang's family situation, assistance officials planned for him a path out of poverty and toward prosperity based on "industry + poor households." Recalling when village officials came to his home, Li Xiaogang said he expressed two wishes: first, to build a new pigsty and expand the scale of pig farming; second, to buy a field tiller to earn money by plowing fields for others. Li Xiaogang never expected his wishes to come true so quickly. The first secretary arranged a subsidized-interest loan for Li Xiaogang to help him buy a field tiller, and assistance officials raised 10,000 yuan from their work unit and donated it to him to build a new pigsty. Li Xiaogang's confidence in escaping poverty increased greatly. Over the year, he bought 40 pigs in installments and embarked on the road of starting a farming business to escape poverty.
Li Xiaogang cheerfully told reporters: "I raise pigs on one hand and plow fields for others on the other. I earn money easily at home, and I feel happier than words can say!" This year the pork price was good, and the average net profit per pig was about 700 yuan. With 40 pigs, he earned nearly 30,000 yuan in a year, and he also earned four to five thousand yuan by plowing fields for others. In 2016, his total annual income was more than 30,000 yuan. Now there was money to treat his wife's illness, the main structure of the house was finally completed, and the whole family happily spent a good New Year in the new house. Next, he plans to continue raising pigs, strive to earn more money, and finish decorating the house.
According to statistics, in 2016, the number of people lifted out of poverty in Yangxi Town was 189 households, 609 people. Among them, Jiantian Village lifted 38 households, 121 people out of poverty, and the per capita annual income of poor households increased by 3,800 yuan.