Post-90s young man in Lingshan, Guangxi, leads locals to get rich by farming leeches
When it comes to leeches, many people will do anything to avoid them and find them terrifying, but one person regards them as a treasure and has made a fortune by farming them. He is Huang Cheng from Ailing Village, Shuangliu Village Committee, Shaping Town, Lingshan County, Qinzhou City. This young man born in the 1990s also took the lead in establishing the Lingshan County Ailing Leech Professional Breeding Cooperative, which has motivated more than 60 households to join in leech farming. In Lingshan County, Qinzhou City, 5 branch farms have been established, the breeding base has reached 500 mu in scale, annual seedling production can reach more than 20 million leeches, and total output value exceeds 5 million yuan.
The courage to start a business
Huang Cheng, who started junior high school in 2006, was already earning his own meal money. Whenever he had time, he would help people in the village carry bricks, counted at one cent each, and after a busy day he could earn more than ten yuan. Huang Cheng was very happy that he could also make money. In 2007, Huang Cheng's father had an accident at a construction site, and in 2008 the embroidery factory run by his mother, which had more than a dozen workers, also went bankrupt. The family economy lost its main pillar, which made Huang Cheng, still in junior high school, experience the hardships of life and also tempered his strong will. In 2009, in order to attend Hepu Health School, Huang Cheng had to deliver express packages and take odd jobs during the summer vacation to earn tuition. It was not until 2011, after Huang Cheng graduated from Hepu Health School and went to work at the Guangxi Region Second Drug Rehabilitation and Reeducation Through Labor Center, that life improved somewhat. But fixed commuting made Huang Cheng feel that the job was not quite suitable for him, and he always wanted to start his own business while young to realize the life he wanted to live.
In fact, as early as 2010, while still in school, Huang Cheng had already begun to have the idea of starting his own business. Huang Cheng studied clinical laboratory science at Hepu Health School, so he understood the effects and functions of various organisms very well, and leeches in particular deeply attracted Huang Cheng's attention.
By extensively collecting information online, Huang Cheng learned about leech breeding techniques, sales markets, and other information. He knew that the current market sales prospects for leeches were broad, that the breeding cycle was short, the risk relatively low, and the return on investment quick, making them an animal-based Chinese medicinal material with great development value. In recent years, market demand for dried leeches has continued to rise, and prices have also continued to climb, from several hundred yuan to more than one thousand yuan now. Huang Cheng began to realize that leech farming was a path to wealth, so in 2011 he made up his mind to resign from his job at the Guangxi Region Second Drug Rehabilitation and Reeducation Through Labor Center and return to his hometown to begin his own entrepreneurial journey.
The hardships of leech farming
The road of entrepreneurship always has setbacks, and Huang Cheng's leech farming was no exception. At the beginning of the business, the two major problems facing Huang Cheng were insufficient funds and insufficient experience and technology.
"Relatives and friends did not understand, and some villagers even mocked me. In order to raise funds to buy leech seedlings, I rushed around borrowing from relatives, classmates, friends, and even teachers, not letting even one hundred, two hundred, or five hundred yuan slip by. After talking until my mouth was dry, I finally raised 18,000 yuan to buy leech seedlings." When talking about the hardships of starting the business, Huang Cheng still remembers them vividly.
Due to insufficient experience and technology, Huang Cheng suffered a major setback. In July 2011, carrying the funds he had raised through countless hardships, Huang Cheng went to Jiangsu and finally purchased the treasure in his heart: leech seedlings. The leech seedlings were bought, but because of the hot weather, the long journey, and inadequate care, nearly 60% died after he returned home. The rest, because preparations were insufficient and breeding management techniques were not mature enough, ended with very few surviving. Looking at the dead leeches, Huang Cheng could not hold back his tears. The 18,000 yuan he had worked so hard to raise had been wasted.
The experience of the first failure taught Huang Cheng a good lesson, and from it he also figured out a relatively scientific breeding method.
After the first lesson, Huang Cheng devoted himself to studying leech transportation, testing water temperature, water depth, and disease prevention and control techniques. He went many times to large leech farmers in Jiangsu, Anhui, Guangdong, and other places to learn from them as a disciple, figured out the tricks of leech farming, and found technical methods to overcome difficulties in leech growth, seedling breeding, and disease prevention and control. In July 2012, he again borrowed 30,000 yuan from relatives, joined a leech farming cooperative in Foshan, Guangdong, and bought more than 80,000 leech seedlings from there in one go. With the support of technology, most of the leech seedlings survived this time. That year Huang Cheng made a profit of more than 30,000 yuan, earned the first bucket of gold in his life, and became even more confident about leech farming.
Leading the locals to get rich together
Over several years, through continuous exploration and hard work, Huang Cheng's leech farming scale has continued to expand. The site grew from the original few mu to more than 30 mu now, with annual net income reaching more than 300,000 yuan. The products are sold far and wide to well-known pharmaceutical factories in Beijing, Anhui, Chongqing, Yulin, and other places. Having succeeded in starting a business, Huang Cheng did not immerse himself in joy. On the basis of stabilizing the scale, and referring to business models from other places, he implemented a new operating system of "cooperative + branch farms + farming households," carrying out tiered management of farmers and unified recovery of finished products, so as to achieve larger-scale industrialized farming, continuously extend the industrial chain, and seek more profit growth points.
Having tasted success in leech farming, Huang Cheng did not forget the people in his hometown. Last September, the Lingshan County Ailing Leech Professional Breeding Cooperative, which he led, was officially established. Seeing Huang Cheng's success in farming, the locals cast aside their previous concerns and asked to join the cooperative.
Huang Zhijie, a handsome 22-year-old young man, saw hope in Huang Cheng's success and quickly joined the cooperative. Because Huang Zhijie did not have much capital, he only farmed 4 mu of leeches. In order to help Huang Zhijie get onto the road to prosperity faster, Huang Cheng not only guided him technically, but also provided stone snails to him free of charge for farming. "I am very grateful to Brother Huang Cheng for his help. He is the one who showed me that living in a Western-style house and driving a car are not dreams." Huang Zhijie said excitedly.
In order to motivate more farming households to devote themselves to industrialized leech farming and help more people get rich together, Huang Cheng plans to contract another piece of land next year, prepare the ponds properly, set up the net cages, and then subcontract the net cages to farming households, while providing free technical guidance. "I hope that through the 'cooperative + branch farms + farming households' model, I can do my modest bit to make every farming household in our cooperative prosperous." When talking about his goals, Huang Cheng was full of confidence.