Walnut industry achieves transformation and upgrading through sci-tech support
On July 12, reporters in Zhaozhuang Township, Chengcheng County, Shaanxi, saw villagers patiently tending, under the blazing sun, branches in their orchards bent low by green walnuts the size of eggs, afraid that anything might go wrong with their "money trees."
From sparse fruiting at the tips to green nuts the size of eggs covering the branches, from indifference to taking initiative, from purely ecological benefits to gaining both ecological and economic benefits... The change in Zhaozhuang Township farmers' attitudes toward walnut cultivation is a microcosm of the development of Chengcheng County's walnut industry.
?Seeking a way out for industry development in order to survive
In 1999, when the national policy of returning farmland to forest was implemented, Chengcheng County firmly seized the unique climate, location and quality advantages of being an optimal suitable area for walnuts and vigorously developed walnut scale. But large area, low efficiency, no real benefit for the people, and the government anxious but helpless - this was a true portrayal of Chengcheng County's walnut development before 2012, and also an urgent problem facing the local government.
Wang Jian, deputy director of the Chengcheng County Science and Technology Bureau, said that in order to solve the follow-up problem of increasing farmers' incomes after returning farmland to forest and let farmers benefit from walnut trees, the government invited a scientific and technological team to carry out high-graft replacement and improvement of walnuts in Xigou Village, Zhaozhuang Township, but the survival rate was less than 20%, and moreover it involved seedling scions grafted onto seedling trees, so even if they survived there was no benefit.
For a time, the masses were full of complaints, saying all sorts of things. "I've seen persimmon and chestnut grafting, but who ever heard that walnuts can also be grafted? This is something nobody has seen for years!" "This is fooling the people and harming the people." The failure of the grafting renovation in Xigou Village dashed the local government's hope of using walnut grafting renovation to increase yields and benefits and help farmers raise their incomes.
"Fruit growers who relied on seedling walnuts planted under the farmland-to-forest program could only watch as bowl-thick trees stood there, shooting straight up. Farmers who had seen no fruit and no benefits for more than ten years complained: 'This is no money-making orchard; this is just a poplar grove that doesn't produce money!'" Wang Jian recalled.
Bold experimentation fulfills a long-held industry dream
Since 2013, in response to the reality of many gully, slope and terrace fields and drought in nine out of ten years, Chengcheng County boldly attempted to develop the walnut industry. The county persisted in grasping both ecology and industry, vigorously developed the walnut industry, and formed a "U"-shaped walnut forest belt along the line of Huanglong Mountain in the north of the county and around the county seat in the center of the county. Now, walnut trees are covered with walnuts, and the local industry development path has finally seen the light of day.
Wang Jian said that in 2013, under the coordination of the science and technology department of Weinan City, the county actively introduced talent and technology from Yangling Agricultural Science City and hired Zhang Hai, a professor from the College of Natural Resources and Environment at Northwest A&F University, for technical cooperation on walnut quality and efficiency improvement, high-graft replacement and improvement, and the hole-storage fertilizer-water technique.
Zhang Hai said that at that time, more than 30,000 mu of seedling walnut trees planted during Chengcheng County's farmland-to-forest period urgently needed high-graft replacement and improvement, and due to problems such as backward local technology and aging varieties, this had become a bottleneck restricting the development of the local walnut industry.
"We demonstrated the new technique of high-graft replacement and improvement of walnuts here, and nearby farmers came at the government's organization, most of them coming to watch the excitement; the shadow of past grafting failures still lingered in the farmers' minds," Zhang Hai said. Through several years of trials, the first shot was fired for local walnut development, not only convincing the people but also, by breaking the technical bottleneck in Chengcheng's walnut industry development, strengthening Chengcheng's confidence and determination to develop walnuts as an industry for increasing farmers' incomes.
At present, through technical guidance, Zhang Hai and his team have established a 3,000-mu demonstration base in Zhaozhuang Township, developed rainfall-efficient utilization technology and labor-saving cultivation models suitable for dry slope walnut orchards in the Weibei region, trained 500 technical personnel, and currently increased the per-mu yield of low-yield orchards by more than 30%.