Introducing Large-Fruited Hazelnuts: Li Wenwei Brings a New Direction for Poverty Alleviation to Huangling Village
These days, Li Wenwei, the first secretary stationed in Huangling Village, Ge Township, Ningwu County, by the Xinzhou Municipal Forestry Bureau, has been wrestling with a nut called the hazelnut.
Together with Zhang Mingsheng, a member of the village-stationed poverty alleviation and an engineer at the Municipal Forestry Bureau's Forestry Technology Extension Station, and Li Xinping, another village-stationed team member, Li Wenwei braved the biting wind and walked all over the slopes, gullies and ridges near and far around Huangling Village. They visited the hazelnut research group base at the Fruit Tree Research Institute of the Shanxi Academy of Agricultural Sciences to consult experts, went to the nursery in Chang'an Township, Gujiao City, which has successfully introduced large-fruited hazelnuts, to learn from experience, and recently planned to visit Benxi in Northeast China, where the earliest successful hybridization of large-fruited hazelnuts took place.
Huangling Village is 45 km from the county seat. The village currently has 1830 mu of arable land, mostly sloping fields. The traditional crops are nothing more than flax, naked oats and potatoes, with low yields and no conditions for deep processing. The village sits on a coal-mine goaf area, and its permanent resident population is less than 70. Through the "look back" and re-identification of targeted poverty alleviation, 63 households and 102 people were determined to be poverty-alleviation households. Last year, the village-contracted unit, the Ningwu County Quality and Technical Supervision Bureau, invested 20,000 yuan to solve the villagers' drinking water problem. This year, the Ningwu County Transport Bureau newly repaved the 3.5 km concrete road into the village, improving the villagers' basic living conditions.
Li Wenwei grew up in the city. Although he had been to the countryside on official visits before, it was, after all, only a fleeting, superficial look. After becoming first secretary, he settled down in the village in a down-to-earth way, and only then did he truly form a concept of rural Xinzhou. Huangling Village had also been "prosperous" some years earlier, and some people had made money by opening coal mines, but those people had long since gone far away, and the village's poor and backward appearance had not changed in the slightest. After completing the visits, surveys and registration work, Li Wenwei still had no clear plan in mind for how to carry out truly effective targeted poverty alleviation in Huangling Village.
According to the village elders, in the 1950s the mountains near Huangling Village were still covered with towering forests. During the "Great Steelmaking" of 1958, and because of illegal digging and excessive grazing in earlier years, the mountains near and far around the village became barren hills and bare ridges. Li Wenwei thought it over: given the village's conditions, there was basically no way out in terms of crop cultivation or livestock raising. If Huangling Village was to escape poverty, it would have to use its brains on these great mountains.
The elders said that when they were children, quite a few wild hazelnuts grew on the mountains, and every year after the autumn harvest they would always call their friends and go up the mountain to gather them. Hazelnuts? Li Wenwei's heart stirred. He recalled seeing information somewhere that Benxi in Northeast China had successfully hybridized large-fruited hazelnuts, and that farmers had profited substantially after the planting was promoted.
Giving play to his department's advantages, Li Wenwei quickly grasped a great deal of information about large-fruited hazelnuts, and went to Gujiao and other places where introduction had succeeded to observe and investigate. After a round of research and verification, and with the support of the leaders of the Municipal Forestry Bureau and the Party Committee and government of Ge Township, the thinking and direction for targeted poverty alleviation in Huangling Village were defined: return farmland to forest and promote the planting of large-fruited hazelnuts.
The Ping'ou hybrid large-fruited hazelnut is currently the only large-fruited hazelnut tree species in the world that can withstand severe cold of minus 35°C. It is an improved variety bred by distant interspecific hybridization using the wild Ping hazelnut of Northeast China as the female parent and the European hazelnut as the male parent. It concentrates the excellent genetic genes of the wild Ping hazelnut and the European hazelnut. It inherits the cold resistance, strong adaptability and delicious taste of the wild Northeast hazelnut, while also inheriting the advantages of the European hazelnut: large fruit, thin shell and high yield.
The large-fruited hazelnut has large fruit, with a single nut weighing 2-4 grams, 3-4 times that of the wild hazelnut. The shell is thin, and the kernel is plump and smooth. It bears fruit early, yields high and steadily, and provides long-term returns. Planted for three years, it begins to bear fruit, and the yield rises year by year as the tree ages. In the full-bearing period, the yield per mu can reach more than 500 jin, and it can continue bearing fruit for 50 years. Pruning and management are simple, with no alternate-bearing phenomenon. The root system is well developed, it is not strict about soil requirements, it has strong adaptability, and the survival rate after planting is almost 100 percent.
In recent years, the autumn purchase price of wild small hazelnuts has been 14-18 yuan per market jin. Fresh large-fruited hazelnuts just harvested are eagerly bought by customers at 25 yuan per jin, while dried nuts fetch 35 yuan. After some years, a conservative estimate should still be above 15 yuan per jin. Even at 10 yuan per jin, the benefit of planting one mu of large-fruited hazelnuts is more than 10 times that of growing crops.
The large-fruited hazelnut tree is tall with a well-developed root system, and has the ecological benefit of windbreak and sand fixation. At present, the main tree species for returning farmland to forest in China are poplar and pine, whose ecological benefits far exceed their economic benefits, while for those who plant them, it takes 20-30 years before they can benefit. Planting large-fruited hazelnuts resolves this contradiction, achieving a win-win for both ecological and economic benefits and for both national and individual interests.
After obtaining the consent of the Municipal Forestry Bureau and the leaders of Ge Township, Li Wenwei's plan was: Huangling Village currently has 1830 mu of arable land; apart from retaining part of the land for subsistence grain, farmland will be returned to forest, and at present the villagers have spontaneously requested to return 1500 mu. Near the mountains, 500 mu of large-fruited hazelnuts will be developed; in the distant mountains, 1000 mu of ecological forest will be planted; and 3000 mu of barren hills will be afforested. A poverty-alleviation afforestation farmers' professional cooperative will be established; the strong laborers among the villagers will join the cooperative, while the elderly and weak can work as forest rangers and earn wages. Under current policy, various subsidies for returning farmland to forest in poverty-stricken counties total 2300 yuan per mu, and this money is fully sufficient to cover seedlings and the management costs of the first three years. They decided to first investigate and introduce small-scale planting, while also inviting experts to give lectures and train villagers on site, and after success, promote it on a large scale.