The poverty alleviation journey of a female village Party secretary rooted in the countryside

"Our village has a full range of vegetables, high yields and good quality, and trucks come to buy almost every day." Chen Shugui, Party secretary of Yaoying Village, Qiaotou Town, Sheqi County, Henan Province, spoke of the village's flourishing vegetable industry with indescribable joy. "It was targeted poverty alleviation that lifted up our vegetable-specialized village."

Yaoying Village is three kilometers from the county seat and is one of the 6 key poverty-stricken villages in Qiaotou Town. How to help poor households shake off poverty and become well-off, and live a moderately prosperous life as soon as possible, became the biggest issue for Chen Shugui after she took office. In August 2013, just as Chen Shugui was worrying about the village's development and the villagers' path to prosperity, she received a notice to attend the national village Party secretaries "Yulu" program training class in the province. Through continuous learning, she was deeply inspired. Drawing on the village's transportation advantage of being close to the county seat, her development idea of leading the people to prosperity by relying on industry gradually became clear, and greenhouse vegetables became her first choice.

Growing vegetables to get rich was a good idea, but putting it into practice was full of difficulties: where would the money to build greenhouses come from? How could poor people be mobilized to participate? How would technical problems be solved? How would sales channels be opened up... After the training class ended, Chen Shugui returned to the village and immediately reported to the relevant leaders of the Qiaotou Town Party Committee and government, and organized a meeting of the village "two committees" team and representatives of the villagers. She combined what she had learned with the actual conditions of the village, scientifically analyzed the vegetable supply and demand situation and sales prospects at the time, and after multiple rounds of evidence-gathering and account comparisons, initially reached a consensus on developing the vegetable industry.

Afterward, Chen Shugui organized dozens of farmers with vegetable planting experience and enthusiasm for greenhouse vegetable cultivation to visit and learn from places such as Xiaguo Village and Xiaoheliu Village in Xinye County and Sheqi County. To dispel the villagers' concerns, she took the lead herself in building 9 greenhouses and persuaded 12 Party member and cadre households to join in. She traveled back and forth countless times between the vegetable bases in Xiaoheliu Village and Xiaguo Village. Master Cai, a local vegetable-growing expert at the Xiaguo Village vegetable base, was moved by her spirit and volunteered to serve as a technical adviser. When the people saw that relying on the "vegetable basket" could indeed fatten the "money bag," they came to Chen Shugui one after another, asking to build greenhouses and grow vegetables.

For poor households to build greenhouses and grow vegetables, the biggest bottleneck was funding. Yaoying Village successively obtained 160,000 yuan in national poverty alleviation funds and 500,000 yuan in small-scale farmer loans from the credit union. Using the "golden key" of poverty alleviation project funds, poor households could receive 4,000 to 5,000 yuan in poverty alleviation fund support for each vegetable greenhouse they built, along with subsidized-interest loan assistance; in addition, poor people could also participate in "Sunshine Project" and "Yulu Program" skills training. Yaoying Village has now developed nearly 200 vegetable greenhouses and has radiated outward to drive the neighboring Xiaochaizhuang Village to build more than 30 greenhouses. The benefits of scale have begun to appear, and the goal of a strong village and prosperous people is becoming reality step by step.

In the process of developing the vegetable industry, Chen Shugui found that vegetable growers planted blindly and arbitrarily, lacking planning, which led to growing potential market risks. After full discussion and deliberation with the village "two committees," pooled development became the consensus. Under her organization, Yaoying Village established the "Industrial Development Mutual Assistance Association," with Party members and cadres providing one-on-one assistance to poor households; it also established the Evergreen Four Seasons Vegetable Professional Cooperative, organizing vegetable growers to join forces and venture into the market together.

In 2014, the Evergreen Four Seasons Cooperative, together with 7 other vegetable cooperatives in Sheqi County such as "Bingyu" and "Xinlv," established the Wanshu Vegetable Planting Joint Cooperative. Following the "six unifications" model of planting planning, breeding and seedling raising, agricultural input supply, technical guidance, organic certification, and branded sales, it strictly managed the entire vegetable production process. "With the joint cooperative backing us, vegetable growers only need to follow the plan and grow the vegetables well. There is no worry about sales, and prices are higher, so more poor households benefit from it," Chen Shugui said.

At present, the "Five-Year Plan for Agricultural Industrialization Development in Yaoying Village" and the "Three-Year Poverty Alleviation Plan for Yaoying Village" have been established, the "Jiujie Family" vegetable trademark is being applied for registration, the 100-ton vegetable fresh-keeping warehouse project has been approved by higher authorities, and the centralized photovoltaic power generation project with a planned investment of 350,000 yuan is about to begin construction...

Shen Honghao Zhang Peiqi