Why does a Tsinghua master's graduate go back to the mountains to raise sheep and chickens?
"These boxes are being sent to Beijing, and these are being sent to Shanghai." On the morning of December 15, at the Ye County E-commerce Industrial Park, Jing Qi, who is thin and wears glasses, said to the courier.
Inside the packages is cut-up mutton, all produced by Jing Qi's farm. The farm's chickens roam freely in the mountain forest, the cattle stroll leisurely, and the lambs frolic... "Doesn't it look like a pure natural health resort for animals?" Jing Qi asked.
Jing Qi is from Yeyi Town, Ye County, and holds a master's degree in communication engineering from Tsinghua University. He once served as the director of a telecommunications network department, with an annual salary of several hundred thousand yuan. His wife holds a master's degree from Renmin University of China. The two originally had a house and a car in Beijing and lived a comfortable life.
In 2013, Jing Qi resolutely decided to return to his hometown to engage in green farming. He saw that people longed for green food, and his hometown was in a mountainous area with unique natural conditions. In Daoguquan Natural Village, Youfangtou Village, Xiali Township, he selected an ideal site.
However, the road to success was not smooth sailing. In 2014, Ye County suffered a drought rarely seen in decades. The farm's peanuts had no harvest at all, the survival rate of chicks was less than 30%, and the plateau sheep died one after another because they could not adapt to the local climate. In 2015, a rare storm and hail disaster lifted the sheep shed onto a hillside several hundred meters away.
Every blow pushed Jing Qi to keep growing. He chose a farming model combining pen feeding and free-range raising. The farm purchased straw as feed, used its own sheep manure as fertilizer, and brought in earthworms to decompose the sheep manure and use it as fertilizer for hawthorn, apple, and other fruit trees. After the earthworms reproduced, they in turn became protein-rich food for the free-range chickens. To avoid the large-scale use of antibiotics, he also asked a traditional Chinese medicine practitioner to add Chinese herbal medicines such as dandelion and isatis root to the feed, increasing the survival rate of the chickens under natural conditions.
Jing Qi also used e-commerce to sell products. After the sheep are slaughtered and aged to remove acidity, they are sent directly to customers through an online store. In addition, he also "moved" the farm into mobile phones, so consumers can watch in real time via mobile phone scenes of sheep eating and chickens pecking for insects.
In Jing Qi's online store, one free-range egg sells for 3 yuan, and the price of mutton is generally higher than in the surrounding market. Jing Qi explained that their agricultural products are green products, mainly sold to first-tier cities, positioned for mid-to-high-end consumers, and quickly delivered by logistics, and they have won customer recognition.
Last year, Jing Qi's farm had sales of more than 2 million yuan. This year it is expected to exceed 5 million yuan, with a profit of more than 1 million yuan.
The farm has also helped the people around it escape poverty and become better off. Villager Wang Gang raised chickens together with him and now earns nearly 100,000 yuan a year. Bai Xiaodan, a specialized farming household in Xindian Town, provides him with more than 8,000 free-range chickens and more than 200,000 free-range eggs each year.
Black locust flowers, wild honey, wild yam... Jing Qi bought these mountain goods and wild vegetables from his hometown, and they were then sold to first-tier cities. Now, the farm has begun discussing cooperation with farming households to raise pigs, and is actively preparing to establish a farmers' professional cooperative, so as to help more farming households escape poverty and become better off.