Mango planting puts Wang Daoxiang on the road to prosperity
Standing in his own mango field, watching boxes of golden mangoes being loaded onto trucks, Wang Daoxiang finally broke into a smile.
Wang Daoxiang, 66, is from Linjiang Village, Shilongba Town, Huaping County, Yunnan Province. His family grows 4 mango varieties on more than 300 mu. Last year, the county suffered an exceptionally heavy rainstorm. Many vehicles across the county were submerged or swept away, and Wang Daoxiang's car, worth more than 400,000 yuan, could not escape the "misfortune" and was also swept away by the flood.
"It hurt so much!" Recalling the car being swept away, Wang Daoxiang still feels a little upset. But when he looks through the notebook recording this year's mango sales, the weight in his heart lifts. More than 100,000 jin of mangoes have yet to be picked, and sales are expected to exceed 800,000 yuan. "A car is a big-ticket item. A few years ago, when we only planted corn, it was very hard to afford one."
According to reports, Huaping County began encouraging farmers to plant mangoes in 1995, but by 2005 the mango planting area was only 40,000 mu. "The process of promoting mango planting was truly not easy," said Wang Guohua, director of the Huaping County Agriculture Bureau.
"The surrounding villagers had never planted mangoes, and only knew that the county's mangoes were 'three-year mangoes,'" Wang Daoxiang said. Corn did not bring good returns, but no one dared easily switch from planting corn to planting mangoes. Apart from seedlings and planting techniques, what people cared about more was: after planting mangoes, how would the market be, and to whom would they sell?
Around 2000, Huaping County once promoted the planting of Japanese radish. Although there was a bumper harvest, it did not sell well. According to the plan, each jin of radish could sell for 1 yuan to 2 yuan, but in the end it sold for only two or three jiao per jin. "I did not plant it at the time, and after that incident I became more cautious about what to plant," Wang Daoxiang said. The village roads were dirt roads, access was poor, and even a trip to the county town was not easy. How could the mangoes be transported out?
After the agriculture department learned the villagers' true thoughts, it decided to first introduce high-quality fruit seedlings, strengthen cooperation with domestic research institutes, improve the technical level of mango pest and disease control, and visit mango sales markets elsewhere for surveys and research. In the end, it decided to guide some farmers to conduct trial planting.
"Only after seeing that the first batch of growers made money did everyone decide to plant," Wang Daoxiang said. He was not among the first batch of growers, but he had always been paying attention to the matter. Upon learning that the first batch of mangoes had gone on the market, he rushed to the county town and only decided to plant mangoes after seeing the selling price with his own eyes.
In addition, the local government pooled agriculture-related funds to speed up infrastructure construction such as rural roads. Now the roads along the river in Linjiang Village are basically hardened, and traffic access has improved greatly, which has made mango transportation and out-of-town sales much more convenient.
"Even villagers who planted little have more than 30 mu of mangoes, and 70% of the people have bought cars," said Leng Tianwei, head of Group 7 of Linjiang Village. In the past, most villagers planted corn, and corn was mostly used as feed. Many villagers went out to work, and life was not wealthy. Now, with mango planting, villagers' annual income ranges from 80,000 to 90,000 yuan at the low end to more than 1 million yuan at the high end.
In view of the fact that mangoes have a low ability to withstand natural disasters, and that frost, hail and other natural disasters can easily cause losses to the mango industry, Huaping County began last year to launch mango insurance, with a premium of 50 yuan per mu per year. Of this, the government subsidizes 10 yuan, and farmers pay 40 yuan in premiums.
"The maximum compensation for mango insurance is 2,500 yuan per mu," said Zhou Guixiang, head of the Huaping County Mango Industry Development Leading Group. Mango trees aged 4 years or above that bear fruit can all be insured. If mango trees or mangoes suffer natural disasters such as rainstorms, floods, mudslides, wind disasters, hail disasters, frost and drought, they can be included in compensation.
Up to now, Huaping County has established 6 thousand-mu high-quality late-ripening mango demonstration bases, 22 hundred-mu science and technology demonstration orchards, and 4 mango science and technology demonstration villages in suitable planting areas along the Lijiang-Panzhihua highway. As the mango planting area has continued to expand, the local area has established mango processing factories to carry out deep processing of mangoes. Now, local products such as dried mangoes and mango vinegar have been brought to market.
In addition, to ensure mango quality, Huaping has begun promoting pollution-free, green and organic mango planting techniques. At present, 10,000 mu of mangoes have obtained green food certification, 78,000 mu of mangoes have obtained pollution-free food certification, and 22,900 mu of high-quality late-ripening mangoes have obtained the national organic product conversion certificate.
"There are still many farmers like Wang Daoxiang who have become rich by planting mangoes," Zhou Guixiang said. By this year, the county's mango planting area is nearly 200,000 mu, with more than 10,000 mango-growing households, and this year's output value is expected to reach 750 million yuan.
"Buy! I'll buy one once the mangoes are sold!" Facing Leng Tianwei's question about whether he would buy a car, Wang Daoxiang answered with a smile. Xinhua News Agency reporter Yang Jing