Growing Sweet Potatoes and Building a Brand: A Post-90s Young Man Forges a New Path of Benefiting Farmers

Hongkan Village in Haitou Town, Danzhou City has a long history of growing sweet potatoes. Because of past poverty, many villagers once relied on sweet potatoes just to fill their stomachs. Now that life is comfortable, the land in the village once used for growing sweet potatoes has begun to lie idle. But in the past two or three years, a post-90s young man has been growing sweet potatoes here, and not only has he done well, he has also attracted more villagers to join in. It looks like growing these sweet potatoes can make money, so let's go find out more.

Arguments like this have become part of Cai Fuqiang's life. The surrounding villagers argue for quite a while, and the reason is simply that each of them wants to be allocated a few more plastic baskets to take back for holding sweet potatoes. After speaking loudly for so long, Cai Fuqiang's throat has gradually gone hoarse, and the fatigue on his still boyish face is hard to conceal. Compared with Cai Fuqiang, the villager Old Zhou has an easier time of it. Although he digs sweet potatoes in the field under the blazing sun, he is full of energy, because a day's work earns him a fairly satisfactory wage.

The harvested Haitou sweet potatoes must go through selection and sun-drying, then be packed into baskets and sent to the shed where Cai Fuqiang does the packing. But the quality of the Haitou sweet potatoes grown on each mu of land varies noticeably. So when packing, Cai Fuqiang is also responsible for checking quality, and for this he has strict standards.

In order to keep a firm grip on quality from the source, Cai Fuqiang takes time out of his busy schedule every day to come to the Hongkan Village Haitou sweet potato planting base and instruct farmers on how to select sweet potatoes that meet the standards.

Hongkan Village is located in the eastern part of Haitou Town, Danzhou City. In Haitou Town, which was built along the sea, Hongkan Village seems somewhat unusual in that it does not rely on fishing for its livelihood. Here, farming has been passed down for generations, and several generations have lived with their faces to the yellow earth and their backs to the sky. For the villagers of Hongkan Village, the land holds an especially profound spiritual attachment. But as the younger generation began leaving to work elsewhere, idle land appeared in the village, and for this, Old Zhou's generation cannot help but feel somewhat melancholy. Yet now, all of this is gradually changing.

Cai Fuqiang's arrival has brought vitality back to the land of Hongkan Village. Cai Fuqiang came to Hongkan Village with only one purpose: to lead the villagers in growing Haitou sweet potatoes together.

Three years ago, in order to encourage farmers in surrounding villages to grow Haitou sweet potatoes together, Cai Fuqiang and his team adopted a "company + farmers" development model, working with farmers to build the Haitou sweet potato brand.

Now, with the seedlings and technology provided by the company, farmers growing Haitou sweet potatoes achieve a yield of one thousand to one thousand five hundred jin per mu, at a cost of 3,000 yuan per mu. The company buys them back at the current market price of five yuan per jin. By this calculation, farmers can reach a net income of more than 2,000 yuan per mu. It is precisely this promising outlook that attracts more and more farmers to start growing Haitou sweet potatoes.

According to Cai Fuqiang, the company packs the Haitou sweet potatoes in boxes weighing 9 jin each, then transports them to mainland markets, where they sell for 118 yuan per box and are highly recognized by those markets. In this way, relying on the "company + farmers" development model, Cai Fuqiang and the villagers achieve mutual benefit and win-win results, turning the small Haitou sweet potato into a well-known agricultural brand within Danzhou City.