How much income did the "Sweet Potato King," a specialized grower in Jieshou, generate this year?

With nearly 1.2 million jin of high-starch sweet potatoes harvested from 200 mu, after selling more than 400,000 jin, Wang Fan, a specialized sweet potato grower in Laowangzhai Village, Xinmaji Town, Jieshou City, is not planning to sell any more. "The remaining sweet potatoes will be made into dry starch. Part of it has already been ordered by customers, and the rest will all be made into vermicelli for sale this winter." Wang Fan had long since figured out how to make more money from selling a million jin of sweet potatoes.

Laowangzhai Village has a tradition of growing sweet potatoes. Wang Fan, who has dealt with sweet potatoes for decades, is a well-known local expert sweet potato grower. Over the years, while carrying on traditional sweet potato growing and processing experience, he has continuously improved his growing methods, with gratifying returns. In 2015, at the 5th National Sweet Potato System "Nongda Feiye Cup" high-yield competition held in Zhengzhou, Wang Fan won first prize in the national sweet potato contest with an excellent yield of 8,000 jin per mu, becoming a veritable "Sweet Potato King."

With guaranteed returns, Wang Fan's sweet potato growing scale has also gradually expanded, increasing to 200 mu this year. Moreover, thanks to good quality, the sweet potatoes he grows are not hard to sell at all: some time ago, as soon as his sweet potatoes were plowed out of the ground, people came to the field edges to haul them away, at a minimum of 0.6 yuan/jin.

In the same season and with the same bumper harvest, Wang Fan was unwilling this year to settle for simply selling sweet potatoes. Last year, several large local sheet jelly makers rushed to buy the starch he produced, and in recent years the small amount of vermicelli he processed has also sold very well. Therefore, he decided not to sell the sweet potatoes produced in his fields directly anymore, but instead to make most of them into sheet jelly and vermicelli, develop large-scale processing, and seek returns by converting them locally.

"This year I plan to make 120,000 jin of dry starch. A while ago, a customer from Henan ordered 70,000 jin, and the rest is all going to be made into vermicelli," Wang Fan said. Going forward, his main energy will shift to sweet potato milling and vermicelli making. This year he also expanded a vermicelli-making workshop of more than 1,000 sq m and added new milling equipment.

In addition to direct economic benefits, Wang Fan has also achieved considerable results in driving local people to increase their incomes and become better off. This year, he took the initiative to connect with poor households in the village and, by providing full-process technical guidance services and other means, helped 12 poor households join the ranks of high-starch sweet potato growing, and all have now achieved satisfactory returns. Wang Wenxue, a local poor household, grew two mu of sweet potatoes, and just by selling fresh potatoes, the average return per mu reached nearly 3,000 yuan. The newly built vermicelli workshop has not yet officially entered large-scale production, but it has already received many vermicelli orders. Sitting down and doing the accounts, Wang Fan felt that this year was another bumper year.