Goji berries from Jiao Huiping sold overseas, annual income increased by over 10 million yuan

I had long heard that Jiao Huiping is a well-known large-scale goji berry grower in Yumen City. On the morning of January 18, when the reporter arrived at the Yumen City Xiyu Hongbaohuinong Agricultural Co., Ltd. that he founded, Jiao Huiping was busy packing the sorted goji berries into boxes for shipment. Jiao Huiping said with a laugh: "Xiaonian is coming soon, so I'm rushing to send the last batch of goods to Malaysia. After that's done, I can relax and enjoy the Spring Festival."

Jiao Huiping, 43 years old this year, is a villager of Xiadonghao Village, Xiaxihao Town, Yumen City. He began growing goji berries in 2008, and not only became wealthy himself but also led the whole village's fellow villagers to live prosperous lives through growing goji berries. In 2016, the 2,800 mu of goji berries he planted yielded 360 tons, and at a price 6 yuan per kilogram higher than the market price, they were sold to Malaysia and the Taiwan region, with income reaching more than 18 million yuan.

When talking about growing goji berries, Jiao Huiping is not intoxicated by his current success. He said that in 2007, he saw in a newspaper the news of Ningxia farmers getting rich by growing goji berries. With the idea of giving it a try, he successively went to Ningxia, Qinghai and other places to learn about the conditions for growing goji berries and to study goji berry cultivation techniques. After investigation and study, he felt that Yumen's temperature, soil structure and climatic conditions were very suitable for goji berry cultivation. In the spring of 2008, he ordered goji berry seedlings for 400 mu of land from Zhongwei, Ningxia, and began leading his family to grow goji berries on the land of Daquanwan in Xiadonghao Village. However, problems arose in the very first year of planting: the goji berries he grew had low yield and poor quality. With more than 100 kilograms of dried fruit per mu, they could only sell for one or two thousand yuan, which was not as worthwhile as growing corn, cumin and other cash crops.

Jiao Huiping said that at the time his family members all had the idea of digging up the seedlings. But once the arrow is shot, there is no turning back; refusing to admit defeat is his nature, and once he sets his mind on something, he must persist in doing it. After the 2009 Spring Festival, he went to Zhongwei again and invited goji berry cultivation experts to solve the planting problems. After understanding the situation in detail, the experts analyzed the causes, which were mainly inadequate planting techniques and insufficient standardized management. For this reason, he invited experts to regularly train him at the planting base and explain management techniques on site. With the help and guidance of the experts, he also introduced high-yield, large-fruit, high-quality goji berry varieties with strong adaptability and strong resistance to pests and diseases, such as Ningqi No. 5 and Ningqi No. 7, for cultivation. In order to achieve green and standardized production levels, he adopted measures and new technologies such as reasonable close planting, scientific fertilization and strengthened field management, continuously improving the quality of the goji berries to ensure that the goji berries grown met green and organic standards.

Hard work pays off. In 2010, the survival rate of the goji berries planted by Jiao Huiping reached 95%, and the yield also doubled compared with before. After that, he expanded the scale of his goji berry base through land transfer. By 2015, his goji berry planting base had grown to 2,800 mu, and the income from growing goji berries also reached 6.04 million yuan, carving out a world of his own in the development of the goji berry industry. Jiao Huiping thus became a well-known "large-scale goji berry grower" in Yumen City, and he himself was also commended by the Yumen City government as a leader in industrial prosperity in the city.

Having become rich himself, he could not forget his fellow villagers. Letting all the villagers in the village embark on the road to prosperity by growing goji berries was Jiao Huiping's greatest wish after becoming rich. To this end, he took the lead in establishing the Xiyu Hongbaohuinong Farmers' Professional Cooperative, adopting a "company + cooperative + farmers" marketing model to provide unified technical guidance for all goji berry growers in the village and to provide processing, purchasing and other services. In order to extend the goji berry industry chain, with the help of the leaders of Xiaxihao Town, he also introduced merchants from Inner Mongolia and built a deep-processing project for goji berries in Xiadonghao Village, completely solving the problem of selling the whole village's goji berries.

Wang Yulin, a villager from Group 3 of Xiadonghao Village, said: "Before we grew goji berries, when spring came, we didn't know what was best to plant, and we worried even more about selling in the autumn. Now, following Jiao Huiping in growing goji berries, with the cooperative managing and selling in a unified way, the selling price is higher than the market price, and we just put the money into our pockets." Last year, Wang Yulin's family grew 25 mu of goji berries, with a net income of 9,000 yuan per mu and total income reaching 225,000 yuan. Wang Yulin said with emotion that this was something he had never even dreamed of.

Ni Jun, Party branch secretary of Xiadonghao Village, introduced that under Jiao Huiping's leadership and assistance, the goji berry planting area in Xiadonghao Village expanded to 9,800 mu last year, accounting for 81% of the village's arable land, and Xiadonghao Village also became a veritable specialized goji berry village. Relying on growing goji berries, some villagers bought apartments in the city, some drove cars, and their lives became more prosperous year after year.