Dairy Farming Experience: Wu Yiming's Journey from Cattle Herder to Ranch Owner

After the car drove for half an hour through the gully-riddled Wuzhong National Agricultural Science and Technology Park in Ningxia, ranches "hidden" among the mountains revealed themselves, and the modern ranch of Ningxia Yiming Dairy was the "big one" among them: 12 semi-enclosed modern cattle sheds, each 11 m tall and 33 m wide; the sheds have a clean environment and are equipped with side-by-side stalls; more than 5,000 dairy cows live leisurely here.

And this is only one of the 5 ranches owned by Wu Yiming. From a "cattle herder" raising a few cows more than a decade ago to a ranch owner now managing 15,000 dairy cows, Wu Yiming's development history can be called a "living record" of the local dairy industry's development.

Because Huangshawo Village in Litong District, Wuzhong City, has many migrants, the village's land could not solve livelihood problems, so some villagers began raising dairy cows. In 2003, the village ran into "trouble" in its first year of dairy farming: although the villagers were very enthusiastic about raising cattle, because they lacked farming experience, they worked hard all year and actually lost money.

To solve this problem, Wu Yiming, who had been the Party secretary of Huangshawo Village, led the villagers in 2004 to establish a dairy cattle association and build a farming park, helping farming households solve difficulties in farming and sales through unified loans, unified feed delivery, unified epidemic prevention, unified milking, and unified sales. Wu Yiming said: "After the association was established, the farmers only had to raise the cattle, and they did not need to worry about anything else. At that time, the association also signed agreements with dairy companies such as Xiajin, so prices were guaranteed, and the village's farming households enjoyed a few good years."

However, the good times did not last long. The "dairy industry winter" brought by the 2008 melamine incident is still fresh in Wu Yiming's memory. He said: "At that time, milk prices fell sharply, and dairy companies still would not purchase. The farming park saw the phenomenon of 'selling cattle to raise cattle,' and farming households could only rely on selling part of their cattle to feed the others."

When many dairy farmers were withdrawing in despair, Wu Yiming did the opposite, gathering up the dairy cows dumped by small households and establishing a ranch.

"The farming park was essentially still small-household farming, and the melamine incident completely exposed this shortcoming. To develop the dairy industry, we must cooperate with large dairy companies, and that requires taking the path of standardisation and scale," Wu Yiming said.

After 2009, as the dairy market improved, Wu Yiming's ranch, thanks to standardised farming, produced higher-quality milk and became a milk source base for Yili. In the following years, he struck while the iron was hot and built 3 new ranches.

Years of "glorious achievements" also gathered a large group of "fans" around Wu Yiming. Small households around the ranch placed more than 7,000 dairy cows in Wu Yiming's ranch in the form of trusteeship and semi-trusteeship. Zhang Yaocai, now 63 years old, is one of them. Zhang Yaocai is a migrant who moved from Tongxin County, Wuzhong City. Over 10 years, Zhang Yaocai followed in Wu Yiming's footsteps, expanding his farming scale from a dozen or so cows to the current 500.

"If it weren't for Wu Yiming, how would I have the chance to cooperate with a large dairy company, and how would this old man be where he is now? He has an accurate grasp of the market, and from now on I will follow him!" Zhang Yaocai said.

The ranch the reporter saw was a high-standard ranch newly built by Wu Yiming last year with an investment of more than 100 million yuan. It can not only accommodate 30,000 dairy cows, but is also equipped with modern cattle sheds, automatic milking machines, and so on. It is an upgraded version of the old farms. While improving the hardware, Wu Yiming also sends his two sons every year to ranches in Europe and Australia to learn advanced foreign farming techniques and management experience.

Wu Yiming said: "Although the ranch has a relatively strong ability to withstand market risks, fresh milk prices have still been sluggish for the past two years. The ranch is in the mountains, but we cannot see only this small patch of land. Only through continuous learning and upgrading can we avoid being eliminated." (Reporters Xu Jinyu, Jin He)