The "Chicken Commander" of a border mountain village made a net profit of 2.05 million yuan from raising chickens last year
Hawa Village is located in the mountainous area northwest of Ruili City, Dehong Dai and Jingpo Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan. Duan Biqing is a city kid who first came here in 2009 as a selected college graduate "village official." He began using a "base + farmers" model, setting up a cooperative. Farmers could get chicks and materials from him on credit, he helped villagers formulate breeding plans, and he bought back all grown chickens in cash at a guaranteed floor price 15% above the market price. By a rough calculation, of the 170,000 chickens marketed last year, the total net profit reached 2.05 million yuan, of which the cooperating farmers accounted for 1.72 million yuan.
Deep in the mountain village, the trees grow thick and lush.
Leaving the urban area of Ruili and driving more than 30 km along winding mountain roads, then another 2 km on a gravel road, the reporter arrived at Hawa Village and saw the tile-roofed houses, the chicken coops, and Duan Biqing, chairman of the Hawa Mountain Free-Range Chicken Breeding Professional Cooperative, whom villagers call the "Chicken Commander." Dark-skinned, this young man approaching 30 looks much older than his actual age.
Hawa Village is located in the mountainous area northwest of Ruili City, Dehong Dai and Jingpo Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan. Across a small river lies Myanmar. Of the village's more than 1,400 people, more than 800 are Jingpo, and nearly 500 are registered poor households. The villagers live scattered across more than 10 sq km of mountain forest, with sugarcane planting as their main source of income. Their per capita annual net income is only a little over 2,000 yuan, making it a typical impoverished border ethnic minority village.
"The first time I came here, I kept thinking the whole way, what should I do, what should I do? It felt like I walked from afternoon until dark." Duan Biqing is a city kid who first came here in 2009 as a selected college graduate "village official." Conditions were harsh, and his monthly take-home pay was only 1,000 yuan. Of the 23 college graduate "village officials" in the same group, nearly half left in the first year.
At that time the village still had no cement road, and the bumpy mountain roads that stretched for dozens of li left him with scars on his knees and chin to this day. When he first came to Hawa Village, "it was truly too hard." Duan Biqing was lost and did not know what to do. Once, over three months, he visited every household in the village and saw poverty with his own eyes, which moved him deeply. Looking at the low-efficiency forest on which the villagers depended for their livelihood, he conceived the idea of raising free-range chickens to lead the villagers to prosperity.
"City kids are unreliable, just messing around." The villagers did not think much of it at first, so Duan Biqing decided to try it himself first. Only if he succeeded as an example would the villagers have the confidence to follow along.
Short of funds, he persuaded his family to mortgage their only house for a loan.
To raise chickens in the mountains, the first thing needed was roads, electricity and water. Bit by bit he paved roads in the mountains, strung up wires on bamboo poles, and channeled water from the mountain. "I had never done physical labor before. Digging a small ditch to bury a water pipe, I dug for 3 days and only got 20 m, and my hands were covered in blood blisters." Recalling those days, Duan Biqing laughed.
Sleeping in the mountains was a big problem. In summer, mosquitoes got through the house enclosed with bamboo strips, so several coils of mosquito repellent had to be lit. On winter nights the mountains were bitterly cold, and he could only fall asleep wearing a down jacket and wrapped in a quilt.
And so it went: a small hut built of bamboo, enduring wind, frost, snow and rain; deep mountains with few people around, as cold came and went and seasons changed. One shovel of mud, one spadeful of soil, and the chicken coops began to take shape in the mountain forest; one deep step, one shallow step, and Duan Biqing kept at it for 7 years.
He had never had any contact with chicken farming and did not understand the techniques. In the first batch he raised 1,050, and nearly half died; the surviving chickens simply would not grow. To figure out breeding techniques, he read books, went online, and visited chicken farms one by one to ask for advice...
After repeated failures, the chicken farm finally began to show results.
But the first thing Duan Biqing thought of was how to help more villagers get rich by raising chickens. He began using a "base + farmers" model, setting up a cooperative. Farmers could get chicks and materials from him on credit, he helped villagers formulate breeding plans, and he bought back all grown chickens in cash at a guaranteed floor price 15% above the market price. By now, among the more than 170 farming households cooperating with Duan Biqing, more than 90 are registered poor households.
The account books fill 12 cabinets. Farmers take chicks and materials from him on credit, and then there is the income from buybacks; after deducting the cost of chicks and materials, the settlements paid to farmers are 3,470 yuan, 2,580 yuan, 1,745 yuan... In recent years, the accounts between Duan Biqing and the villagers have been recorded transaction by transaction, clear and plain. By a rough calculation, of the 170,000 chickens marketed last year, the total net profit reached 2.05 million yuan, of which the cooperating farmers accounted for 1.72 million yuan.
Villager Dao Mudong's family raises more than 1,000 chickens, but the household has only her and her husband as labor. An elderly person is bedridden, and she has to support the whole family, young and old, as well as a child fostered by relatives. "Relying on farming is a heavy burden. Raising chickens brings in some income, but there are also many places it has to go." "Good person, good person, good person." When mentioning Duan Biqing, she said "good person" three times in a row in not very fluent Chinese.
"Better than farming, and you can still stay home." Villager Musang runs a small shop. Her family has two elderly people and two children, and raises more than 800 chickens. "Duan Biqing treats us well. When we have no money to keep things going, he does not come demanding payment." She figured that there were still dozens of mu of land on the mountain, and in the future she still wanted to go up the mountain to raise more chickens.
"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. Changing backward ideas and teaching farmers techniques is the most important thing." Duan Biqing treats training as a major undertaking.
Chicken coops, fields, the village committee, schools... sometimes two or three people, sometimes more than a hundred, Duan Biqing has again and again taught villagers deep in the mountains about breeding and e-commerce knowledge, sometimes holding more than a dozen training sessions in a month. Farmers from impoverished mountain areas such as Longchuan, Yingjiang and Lianghe also often come to the chicken farm to learn techniques for warming and brooding chicks. Duan Biqing eats and lives with them and does not charge a cent.
More and more farming households are cooperating. With the cooperative, the problem of the farmers' "first kilometer" in breeding has been solved, but as more and more chickens are raised, sales become a problem. Duan Biqing set his sights on e-commerce and physical stores, hoping to better connect the free-range chickens, which carry the farmers' hopes of escaping poverty and becoming prosperous, with the "last kilometer."
The children of people his age are already running all over the ground, but Duan Biqing has his heart entirely in the cooperative and has still not married. "I think I am truly quite happy. This is not something that can be compared by how much money you make." When talking about leading the villagers out of poverty, he did not say much, but his sense of pride rose spontaneously. "I want to help them. I must help..."