Selenium-enriched melon and fruit cultivation drives the whole village to prosperity together

Zhang Chengyun picking grapes inside a greenhouse

As the weather gradually turned colder, a reporter saw inside a greenhouse a figure wrapped in heavy clothing, dragging a disabled right leg as he walked among the grape vines. He is Zhang Chengyun, a "startup star" of Xijie Village, Renfeng Town, Jiyang County.

"Even though my leg makes walking a bit inconvenient, I still work with plenty of energy. At present our cooperative has established partnerships with some melon and fruit distributors, and we have also promoted ourselves online. Recently quite a few buyers have come to us on their own initiative to make purchases, so we have more sales channels than before and no longer worry about selling our products," Zhang Chengyun said happily. The cooperative Zhang Chengyun mentioned is the Lingyun Melon and Fruit Planting Professional Cooperative of Renfeng Town. This cooperative has an inseparable bond with Zhang Chengyun, and the story has to start 6 years ago.

One day in March 2011, while Zhang Chengyun was standing on top of a greenhouse putting down straw mats, he accidentally slipped and fell from the greenhouse, which was more than 2 m high, causing a comminuted fracture of his right kneecap. After half a year of recovery, he was able to get up and walk, but he was left with a lifelong disability. In 2012, just as Zhang Chengyun's leg injury had recovered, his wife became paralyzed by a cerebral thrombosis from caring for him and tending the greenhouse. A year later, his newborn grandson was diagnosed with congenital blindness in both eyes. For three consecutive years, misfortunes never came singly, and three people with disabilities appeared in the family.

The stubborn Zhang Chengyun was not knocked down by the difficulties before him. On the one hand, he patiently cared for his sick wife and blind grandson; on the other hand, he hired people to run the greenhouse. During this period, he found that many melon farmers with disabilities like himself had to endure hardships beyond what ordinary people could imagine, whether working in the greenhouse or selling watermelons.

So he approached the other 4 families in the village that also had members with disabilities to discuss setting up a melon and fruit cooperative made up of melon farmers with disabilities. On May 24, 2013, a cooperative specializing in growing selenium-enriched melons and fruits and composed of 5 families with members with disabilities, the Lingyun Melon and Fruit Professional Planting Cooperative of Renfeng Town, was established, symbolizing the resolve not to abandon lofty aspirations, to face difficulties head-on, and to jointly realize the dream of starting a business.

Over the past 3 years, with the development of the cooperative, the number of farming households in the cooperative has now expanded to 15. "To join our cooperative, one of the most basic conditions is that the family has a member with a disability, and that we need to work together and help each other to jointly seek a way out and pursue development for the selenium-enriched melon and fruit industry," Zhang Chengyun said to the reporter while checking the information on cooperative members.

In 2016, under the guidance of the Renfeng Town government and the town watermelon association, the cooperative uniformly adopted the association's new version of trademarks and packing boxes and used the Renfeng watermelon e-commerce platform to sell selenium-enriched watermelons, bringing about a situation in which both production and sales of selenium-enriched watermelons flourished. This became the year with the best sales performance for Renfeng selenium-enriched watermelons since the cooperative was founded.

The story of Zhang Chengyun and the Lingyun Melon and Fruit Professional Planting Cooperative of Renfeng Town that he initiated and founded has become a much-told tale locally in Renfeng Town. At the end of 2015, Zhang Chengyun was named a model entrepreneur with disabilities in Jiyang County and received 20,000 yuan in startup encouragement funds.