Every Household in Suihua Takes Up Livestock Farming, Turning a Sideline into a Prosperous Business

For Zhang Haimin of Yanhe Village, Minzheng Town, Qinggang County, Suihua City, the most important and happiest part of each day is feeding his geese. When a reporter recently visited Zhang Haimin's home, the yard was full of large white geese, cackling as they scrambled for their feed. Zhang Haimin said that each goose egg is a golden egg for this family, fattening his wallet, and he now has more than 1,100 breeding geese. "I estimate a net income of 80,000 yuan this year, and if things go well next year, I'll shake off the label of poor household." Zhang Haimin has become a major livestock farmer in the local effort to escape poverty through developing grass-fed livestock husbandry.

Abundant grain, abundant grass and abundant straw are the hallmarks of Suihua as an agricultural city, giving it a unique advantage for developing livestock husbandry. This year, Suihua City has taken "strong in both farming and livestock" as its direction, vigorously developing grass-fed livestock husbandry, steadily developing grain-consuming livestock husbandry, and focusing on building bases for high-quality beef cattle, green milk sources, cold-region black-soil pigs and high-quality geese, striving to build 7 beef cattle farms of 10,000 head each and 10 goose farms of 100,000 birds each, to drive up farmers' incomes.

The Holstein dairy cattle breeding farm in Shandong Tun, Xincun Village, Xincun Township, Qinggang County, currently has 8,000 sq m of cattle barns, 1,500 mu of grassland and 500 mu of cultivated land. Sun Xiuqing, founder of the breeding farm, said that in 2005 he began developing dairy cattle farming in Qinggang County, drawn by the county's unique advantages in grassland and silage corn. The farm raises only fine Chinese Holstein dairy cattle, uses high-quality frozen semen imported from the United States for breeding, and feeds whole-plant silage and high-energy feed such as alfalfa imported from the United States year-round. At present, there are nearly 600 dairy cattle on hand, including 350 adult cows and 230 milking cows, with an annual milk output of 2,000 tons and a profit of 2.02 million yuan. Sun Xiuqing told reporters that as early as 2010, the breeding farm was designated by the Ministry of Agriculture as a standardized demonstration pasture.

Suihua City is located in the world-recognized black soil belt, golden corn planting belt and golden grass-fed livestock and poultry breeding belt, and enjoys regional advantages and resource endowments including vast territory, fertile soil, a cool climate and a fine environment. It is developing grass-fed livestock husbandry such as cattle, sheep and geese, building a "main producing area for grass-fed livestock husbandry" focusing on the five western grassland counties (cities), and a "development area for grass-fed livestock husbandry" focusing on the five eastern agricultural counties (cities) and districts. In terms of specific practices, Suihua City promotes effective cooperation models such as "large-scale breeding farm + farmers", "breeding cooperative + farmers", "leading enterprise + base + farmers" and "leading enterprise + base + cooperative + farmers", building integrated production and operation entities covering the entire industry chain of breeding, processing and sales, constructing modern livestock science and technology demonstration parks, developing standardized large-scale breeding, and building high-yield, high-quality and high-efficiency demonstration bases, forming new business entities integrating the three industries, led by leading enterprises, guided by livestock science and technology demonstration parks, and based on appropriately scaled standardized breeding farms and breeding professional cooperatives.

Yuanye Food Co., Ltd. is a provincial-level leading enterprise in agricultural industrialization located in Hailun City. In an office at the company equipped with a huge monitoring display screen, Chairman Cao Zhongjun was checking every stage of production through the screen. Cao Zhongjun explained that this is the company's traceability system for organic waxy corn. Cao Zhongjun said that through methods such as land transfer, the company has built 4,000 mu of its own base and 8,000 mu of jointly built base with farmers. After the waxy corn produced on its own base is harvested, all the resulting straw is used as silage feed, and 400 to 500 beef cattle are raised with this silage feed; the manure produced by these beef cattle is used to produce organic fertilizer through enzyme organic fertilizer technology, and all this organic fertilizer is spread back on the company's own base, forming a closed-loop circular agriculture industry chain. In addition, the company has also set up a beef cattle breeding cooperative, driving 155 households to raise beef cattle, with a total of more than 2,000 cattle raised.