Potato industry chain links farmers' dreams of prosperity
"In the past, we grew potatoes just to harvest some food, growing our own and eating our own, self-sufficient; now it's an economic society, and we grow potatoes to make money. Once the potatoes are sold, we can just buy some grain, and that's enough to eat for a year!"
On November 11, when a reporter from China Women's News - Chinese Women's Net interviewed Dong Ju in Hongguang Village, Gaofeng Township, Anding District, Dingxi City, Gansu Province, the villager said a whole string of things to the reporter. Dong Ju is a poor household in the village, and now, by growing potatoes, she has embarked on the path out of poverty.
In recent years, Dingxi City, by transforming its development approach and establishing the concept of industrial poverty alleviation, has vigorously developed the potato industry and has become one of the three major potato-producing areas in the country and the country's largest virus-free seed potato breeding base, an important national commercial potato production base and potato products processing base. At the same time, it has formed a complete industrial chain integrating production, storage, processing and sales. The potato industry has become an important pillar for the city's industrial poverty alleviation and farmers' escape from poverty.
Like Dong Ju, more than 100,000 poor farming households in Dingxi have become beneficiaries of the development of the potato industry.
Earth eggs turned into golden eggs
Hongguang Village, where Dong Ju lives, is located in the mountains at the junction of Lintao, Weiyuan and Anding District in Gansu Province. Like many mountainous areas in Dingxi, because of inconvenient transportation and information, harsh natural conditions, especially dry climate, and backward planting techniques and concepts, the villagers for generations have simply relied on the land to make a living. Apart from harvesting some food from the land, it was hard to earn more income.
But the development of the modern potato industry changed all of this. "Farming now is completely different from the past. From planting and harvesting to laying plastic film, it's all done by machines. I mainly grow seed potatoes. Seed potatoes fetch a high price. If things go well, one ton of seed potatoes can bring in 1,700 to 1,800 yuan in income," Dong Ju told the reporter.
Villager Jin Yali used to work with her husband as a migrant worker. Apart from being far from home, leaving behind the elderly and children, and suffering the hardships of displacement, she could not earn much money either. In recent years, the village began developing seed potato cultivation, and Jin Yali returned home to take up farming. In addition to the family's ten-plus mu of land, she also transferred dozens of mu of idle land from villagers, most of which is used to grow seed potatoes and commercial potatoes.
The reporter roughly did the accounts for Jin Yali's family. The income from one ton of seed potatoes is about 1,700 to 1,800 yuan. Calculating on the basis of Jin Yali's family's 50 mu of land, after deducting costs such as labor and agricultural inputs, Jin Yali's family income is much better than working as a migrant worker.
According to Gansu Province's poverty alleviation standard, Dong Ju can escape poverty this year. She told the reporter: "Now we don't have to worry about food and clothing. I just hope to make more money by growing seed potatoes!" Dong Ju's words voiced the aspirations of many villagers.
The potato is the most ordinary kind of food on rural dinner tables in Dingxi. These earth eggs, once so commonplace in the eyes of Dingxi farming families, have now truly become the golden eggs for villagers to escape poverty and become prosperous.
Carrying out industrial poverty alleviation through multiple models
Standardized potato cultivation through the "enterprise + base + farmer" approach is the basic form of Dingxi's potato industry development and also the main model by which Dingxi promotes poverty alleviation and escape from poverty through industrial development.
In this model, the specialized cooperatives participating in the construction of planting bases are an important link. At present, Dingxi already has 377 potato farmers' specialized cooperatives, covering 121 poor villages.
The person in charge of the "Golden Eggs Specialized Cooperative" in Hongguang Village told the reporter that, apart from having its own planting base, the cooperative mainly cooperates with villagers in two ways. One is through land transfer, paying farmers a transfer fee and at the same time recruiting farmers to work at the cooperative, so that farmers can obtain two incomes; the other is order-based cooperation, in which the cooperative provides seeds to contracted farmers and uniformly purchases the products.
The reporter learned that Anding District has given growers preferential policies in industrial poverty alleviation. For example, for pre-basic seed potatoes, the market price for one mu of land is 1,800 yuan, but farmers only need to pay 300 yuan, with the other 1,500 yuan subsidized by the government.
"The advantage of cooperating with specialized cooperatives is that the seeds provided by the cooperative are low in price, and besides, there's no need to worry in the harvest season because the cooperative will come to purchase. We just focus on growing," villagers Dong Ju, Xi Xiumei and others told the reporter.
It is understood that the main poverty alleviation model of "enterprise + base + farmer" has also spawned a variety of specific models, enabling Dingxi, in developing the potato industry to boost poverty alleviation, to form a sound pattern of enterprise assistance and mass participation, and to blaze its own path out of poverty.
These specific models include the self-breeding and promotion model of seed potatoes for poor households under the potato improved-variety "one-fen field" project, the model of enterprises transferring land to build bases and absorb poor households for employment, the "enterprise + base + farmer" poor household participation model, the model of enterprises absorbing poor households for employment and income growth, and the market + purchasing outlet model for poor households to increase income through transport and sales, among others. Among them, the potato improved-variety "one-fen field" project has poor households plant 0.1 mu of pre-basic seed potatoes, and through year-by-year self-breeding and self-planting and mutual exchange among nearby farmers, the area planted with improved varieties has been continuously expanded; the "enterprise + base + farmer" poor household participation model is one in which seed potato production enterprises build breeding bases and potato product processing enterprises establish raw material bases, using base construction to drive poor households to plant. At present, the city builds about 1.5 million mu of seed potato breeding bases each year, driving poor households to build 100,000 mu; it builds about 700,000 mu of raw material bases each year, driving poor households to plant 150,000 mu.
In addition, Dingxi City also provides scientific and technological support for increasing poor households' income by innovating planting models, and provides intellectual support for increasing poor households' income by strengthening technical training, training 35,000 potato farmers each year, including 16,000 poor household members.
In 2015, Dingxi planted 2,935,200 mu of potatoes, with an output of more than 5 million tons, and 70% of poor farming households participated in potato cultivation. Apart from cultivation, the storage, processing and sales links in the potato industry also provide employment opportunities for poor households. At present, Dingxi City has a total of 27 leading potato processing enterprises with a capacity of more than 10,000 tons, absorbing 432 poor household workers for employment; and 32 seed potato production enterprises, absorbing 528 poor household workers for employment.
Yang Qifeng, deputy director of the Gansu Provincial Department of Agriculture and Animal Husbandry, said to the reporter in an interview: "Dingxi has boosted poverty alleviation through developing the potato industry, and in industrial development it has already built a complete industrial chain. The formation of the industrial chain has not only benefited the vast number of farmers, but also eliminated risks and guaranteed farmers' income. It can be said that, relying on this industry, farmers have not only fed themselves, but also become prosperous!"