Growing mangoes for thirty years, Li Shisong becomes a mango expert

Tiandong County in Baise, Guangxi is the largest mango production base in the country, and this base has produced a "mango expert" - Li Shisong, a villager from Jiuhe Village, Xiangzhou Town. Li Shisong, 50 years old this year, has nearly 30 years of mango growing experience and can be called the number one person in Tiandong County with the longest mango growing history and the richest experience.

"I used to farm and do small business, and in the end I fell in love with growing mangoes, and I have kept at it for decades." Li Shisong told reporters that precisely because of his mango obsession, not only did his own family shake off poverty and become wealthy early on, but by playing a "pass on, help out and lead the way" role, he also helped quite a few nearby villagers escape poverty.

In 1989, when he saw much wasteland appearing in his village's production team, Li Shisong, who was familiar with Tiandong's geographical and climatic advantages, came up with the idea of growing mangoes. He rented 20 mu of land from the production team for 200 yuan to grow Ivory No. 22 mangoes. But because the unit price of mangoes was not high at the time and profits were limited, many people gradually gave up growing mangoes, and only Li Shisong persisted in this line of work.

In 1997, Li Shisong's mango orchard had already reached a considerable scale, with more and more fruit setting, and the fruit price also soared to 2.4 yuan/kg. Having had a first taste of success, Li Shisong transferred all 50 mu of land to an out-of-town boss, and in 2003 he came to the orchard of the Baise Retired Cadres Bureau and contracted 200 mu of land. He cut down the original old mango trees in the orchard and regrafted them with Tainong mango, then transferred the orchard out again 2 years later. After going through two mango orchards in succession, in 2007 Li Shisong returned to Jiuhe Village, rented 20 mu with a total of 700 mango trees, and grafted them with Jinhuang mango. In 2014, he went to Xiangzhou Forest Farm and rented more than 100 mu of land, grafting it with Guiqi mango and Yuwen mango. At this point, Li Shisong's orchard finally stabilized.

In 2014, because they took a fancy to Li Shisong's rich mango grafting and management skills, Zhuangxiang Hegu Group specially invited him to serve as technical director, responsible for managing a 10,000-mu mango base. On this base he fully brought his talents into play, carrying out grafting and variety replacement on all the original fruit trees, with the main varieties including Tainong, Red Ivory, Red Guifei, Hongyu mango, Jinhuang mango, Guiqi, Kate mango, Yuwen mango and others. The new varieties are expected to go into production after three years, and after that each tree will increase output by 10 kg compared with before, and after six years they can enter the full production period.

Starting in 2007, Li Shisong would keep farming records every year, and often take out the old ones to look through them and compare changes in temperature and humidity to see when to pick flowers, spray pesticides and so on. Through continuous practical accumulation, Li Shisong summed up a wealth of theoretical experience.

Having skills also requires grasping weather changes, and this is also an important insight of Li Shisong. The sudden abnormally cold weather at the beginning of this year dealt a heavy blow to farmers using extensive management - each tree produced only about 10 jin of fruit or even had no harvest at all. But Li Shisong, through timely measures such as flower picking, pesticide spraying, flower forcing and pest and disease prevention, achieved an average fruit yield of 50 kg per tree. "Fine management can make mangoes set fruit at a higher rate, look better and have a higher commercial rate." Li Shisong said, for example, that Yuwen mango can now reach a profit of 3,000 yuan per mu, and Tainong can reach a profit of 2,000 yuan per mu, with per-mu profit overall 1 to 5 times higher than that of ordinary farmers.

Now, having been promoted to technical director of the group, Li Shisong has over the past two years provided various kinds of training to more than a thousand farmers in Xiangzhou Town and surrounding towns. In 2014, he also established the Fuze Mango Cooperative and served as its chairman. So far, the cooperative has grown to more than 20 members, and the mango planting area will reach 2,000 mu, implementing an integrated production and sales chain and in the future further driving more farmers out of poverty.