Mushroom farmers cannot get rich without a good helper: Xu Qinghai

A good helper for mushroom farmers getting rich

-- A profile of Xu Qinghai, a provincial pacesetter in migrant workers' entrepreneurship and innovation

Edible fungi, as a green and healthy food, are increasingly favored by people. In Linkou County, Heilongjiang Province, there is a group of farmers who have made their fortunes by growing edible fungi. In their words, there is a dutiful "Mr. Know-It-All" of mushrooms who teaches techniques to mushroom farmers without reservation and has become a "big name in the mushroom world" trusted and supported by the broad community of mushroom farmers. He is Xu Qinghai, a technician at the Edible Fungus Industry Development Office of the Linkou County Supply and Marketing Cooperative Union.

By rough count, Xu Qinghai, now 56 years old, has been growing edible fungi for seventeen years. According to Xu Qinghai, he had only a junior high school education and began farming in 1982. It was not until 1999 that he started growing edible fungi. "At that time there was little land, and farming brought in a low income, so I just wanted to earn a bit more money," Xu Qinghai said. Back then, he saw on television that large areas in the south were being used to grow edible fungi, while edible fungus cultivation in the northeast was just beginning to emerge, so he wanted to become the first person in his village to grow edible fungi.

He acted as soon as the idea came to him. Xu Qinghai quickly bought books on cultivating mushroom spawn and studied them intently. He also sought advice from specialized fungus-growing households in nearby counties. After he began growing wood ear fungus, Xu Qinghai ate and slept in the greenhouse, working from morning to night. Through exploration and study, he finally succeeded the next year in cultivating 20,000 bags of spawn, with a net income of more than 20,000 yuan. "This is much higher than the income from farming." Seeing that Xu Qinghai had tasted the sweet rewards of growing edible fungi, the villagers joined in one after another.

In order to cultivate edible fungi of better quality and higher yield, Xu Qinghai learned the advanced hanging-bag greenhouse cultivation technique from the south. In order to reduce air pollution caused during high-temperature sterilization and truly achieve energy conservation and emissions reduction, Xu Qinghai improved the raw coal sterilization boiler into a Xing coal sterilization boiler. Thanks to his outstanding skills, the spawn he made was free of contaminating bacteria, easy to keep alive, and high-yielding. He made full use of corncobs and soybean stalks as raw materials to cultivate edible fungi, and also used spent fungus substrate to grow mushrooms, thus both reusing waste and improving the production efficiency of edible fungi, realizing the wealth value of corncobs and edible fungi.

In 2013, while still growing fungi in Dongning County, Xu Qinghai heard that mushroom farmers in Linkou County were about to stop cultivating edible fungi. After making inquiries through various channels, he learned that, hindered by a lack of technical knowledge and management skills, the edible fungi they cultivated had a low finished-product rate and brought little profit, so the mushroom farmers did not dare continue cultivating. "After hearing about this situation, I thought about whether I could pass on my skills and experience to them and help them continue cultivating edible fungi," Xu Qinghai told the reporter.

Once he had this idea, Xu Qinghai contacted the then secretary of the Linkou County Party Committee and put forward his idea. After hearing it, the county party secretary immediately decided to have Xu Qinghai come to Linkou County to do technical work related to black wood ear fungus cultivation, and established the Linkou County Edible Fungus Industry Development Office.

After coming to Linkou County, Xu Qinghai did not pause for a moment. "It is not enough just to have the determination to shoulder a heavy burden; you also need the ability to act, to serve mushroom farmers with all your strength and raise their incomes." From the first day he came to work at the Linkou County Edible Fungus Production Office, he has always been on the road helping mushroom farmers.

During the day, he personally served as a teacher, organizing mushroom farmers session after session for written or on-site training. At night, he could not spare time to rest, going from village to village and settlement to settlement to give mushroom farmers targeted training. In the more than three years since coming to Linkou County, Xu Qinghai has had almost little time to sit in the office working; most of his time has been spent in fungus bag factories, at mushroom farmers' homes, and in the fungus fields. To make it convenient for mushroom farmers to consult him, he gave them his mobile phone number, so that whenever any problem arose during the fungus-making process, the mushroom farmers could call him at any time. Whether it was windy or rainy, day or night, as long as he received a call from a mushroom farmer, Xu Qinghai would immediately set out and rush to the farmer's home. "I am a mushroom farmer myself, and I know the hardship involved. If a problem with the fungi is not dealt with in time, it will affect a whole year's harvest." Running around like this, Xu Qinghai never once charged the mushroom farmers a fee; even his travel and accommodation expenses came out of his own pocket.

Where there is giving, there is harvest. Today, the mushroom farmers of Linkou County have greatly improved both in their mindset and in their overall quality. The fungus bag factories in Linkou County have turned from loss to profit, and the mushroom farmers' net incomes have also risen noticeably. More and more farmers are joining the ranks of those cultivating edible fungi.

In order to teach more farmers the techniques of cultivating edible fungi, in 2015 Xu Qinghai established a wood ear demonstration base in Zhichang Village, Longzhao Town, Linkou County. Mushroom farmers or farmers interested in cultivating edible fungi could all come to the base to observe and learn. The wood ear base boosted the villagers' enthusiasm for growing black wood ear fungus. Since its establishment, Xu Qinghai has received more than 500 mushroom farmers. Whether they were villagers from the county or mushroom farmers from other counties, Xu Qinghai explained everything with great care and charged no fees at all, which also won him the recognition and trust of the people.

Xu Qinghai is full of confidence about the future. "My work is to serve the people. In the future, I will also pass on my experience and skills to more farmers without reservation, so that more and more farmers can become rich by cultivating edible fungi!"