The wealth-building experience of a post-80s rural girl
"Working away from home is not as good as starting a business back home." This was the first thing Qiu Minfang, a post-80s rural girl, said to the reporter. Born in 1982 in Shibao Town, Gulin County, Qiu Minfang married her husband Shi Linbing after graduating from a finance school in 2001, and they had always worked away from home. In 2010, she chose to return home to start a business, growing flue-cured tobacco. In 2013, because the land was left idle, she began growing Chinese medicinal herbs. The road of entrepreneurship was not always smooth, but this post-80s girl, with her own diligent hands, propped up a world of her own.
After years of unremitting effort and continuous learning, Qiu Minfang also became an expert in growing Chinese medicinal herbs. In July 2014, she established a cooperative, whose main business is based on the cultivation, promotion, buyback, primary processing and sale of Chinese medicinal herbs. Due to development needs, in October 2015 she registered and established Huinong Xiangyu Ecological Agriculture Development Co., Ltd., adopting a development model that uses Chinese medicinal herb cultivation to drive poultry and livestock breeding as well as sightseeing tourism.
Qiu Minfang introducing products to the reporter
Why choose to grow Chinese medicinal herbs? Qiu Minfang told the reporter that the state strongly supports rural industrial development, and Gulin County is located at 38 degrees north latitude, warm and moderate, suitable for the growth of Angelica sinensis, Platycodon grandiflorus, Prunella vulgaris and other medicinal herbs urgently needed in large quantities by the market. Gulin is located at the border of Sichuan and Guizhou, on the north side of the western section of the Dalou Mountains in the Wumeng Mountain system, with a total area of 3,184 square kilometers, governing 26 townships, and inhabited by 26 ethnic groups including Han, Miao and Yi. It is a key county in the new round of national poverty alleviation and development, a key county for regional development and poverty alleviation in the Wumeng Mountain area, and an old revolutionary base area of Sichuan Province.
Nowadays, the Chinese medicinal herb industry of the cooperative led and established by Qiu Minfang has developed rapidly and has become a pillar industry for increasing farmers' income in the region. At present, the cooperative has built 1,233 mu of densely planted, high-efficiency Chinese medicinal herbs, 8 planting bases, 1 standardized processing workshop, 3 pieces of processing equipment, and cultivated 156 large growers. In 2015, it distributed more than 700,000 medicinal seedlings, harvested 300,000 kilograms of finished Chinese medicinal herbs, and the cooperative organized the processing and sale of 230,000 kilograms of Chinese medicinal herbs, achieving annual sales of 3.25 million yuan, with an average income increase of 2,600 yuan per member and driving an average income increase of 1,400 yuan per farmer household.
Qiu Minfang going deep into the base
With the expansion of planting scale, technical training and sales channels became what Qiu Minfang cared about most. The cooperative follows the operating model of "company + cooperative + herb farmers," signs purchase contracts for Chinese medicinal herbs with the company, implements order-based production and protective-price purchasing, and strengthens herb farmers' confidence in developing Chinese medicinal herbs. It also carries out quality improvement projects. The cooperative has set up a technical training center, added computers and projectors, established a learning and training system, and invited experts in the Chinese medicinal herb industry to carry out technical training at the cooperative. Thus two major problems were solved. Qiu Minfang said that since technology and sales were no longer problems, she began to consider how to develop in the direction of rural tourism.
In recent years, Qiu Minfang has led the cooperative to make full use of ecological resources, using the leaves, stems and other parts of our Chinese medicinal herbs other than the medicinal parts to raise black-boned chickens, wild boars, sheep and other poultry and livestock, while the manure produced by the poultry and livestock is used as organic fertilizer in our Chinese medicinal herb cultivation, so that ordinary people can buy ecological, green, healthy and environmentally friendly products.
After the interview, Qiu Minfang told the reporter that entrepreneurs must have a heart that is not afraid of failure, must keep learning, and at the same time must be good at seizing opportunities for rapid development. She herself will strive to develop the local Chinese medicinal herb cultivation well, thereby leading everyone to increase income and become better off.