How can fruit farming in mountainous areas grow and thrive? The path of growth in a poor mountain valley

In early June, Wang Bangzhong set out from Changputang Village, Fenghuang County, Hunan. This time his destination was Beijing. Although it would still be several months before the pomelos and kiwifruits hit the market, as one of the heads of the Changputang Fruit Cooperative, he wanted to scout new markets and open up sales channels early for the pomelos and kiwifruits planted on an expanded scale this year.

Tian Xiangqun, meanwhile, set out from Guizhou and returned to Changputang Village. As captain of Changputang Village's women's grafting service team, besides bringing back more than 2 million yuan in income earned by leading the female team members through a busy year of grafting work away from home, she also had to return to the village to prune the kiwifruit trees.

"For many years, it is precisely by relying on science and technology and on the market that Changputang Village's ecological fruit industry has grown from nothing, and the villagers have been able to take off their 'poverty caps.' In the past two years, Changputang fruit has become more and more famous, and the villagers' lives have become sweeter and sweeter," said Wang Anquan, chairman of the Changputang Kiwifruit Planting Professional Cooperative, beaming with joy when talking about Changputang's fruit industry.

Using science and technology, learning science and technology: the fruit industry takes root in the mountain valley

In the 1980s, when tourism in Fenghuang County was already flourishing, Changputang Village, only 7 kilometers from the county seat, was still an obscure poor Tujia mountain village, with more mountains and little land, where rice planted for three years failed to yield a harvest in two.

From planting rice and corn to switching to fruit, Changputang Village made no shortage of attempts. In 1985, after the successful introduction of Miyagawa mandarin from Ninghai, Zhejiang, whenever there was a new or good variety that was both suitable for the village to grow and had market potential, Changputang Village rushed to introduce and trial-plant it: Xiangxi ponkan, "Miliang No. 1" kiwifruit, Guanxi honey pomelo from Pinghe, Fujian, and red-fleshed kiwifruit from Cangxi, Guangyuan, Sichuan all succeeded.

What makes the villagers quite proud is that in Changputang Village, to introduce a fruit, one only needs to bring a few branches, and within one or two years it can reach scale, and the fruit is of good quality and tastes good.

"The magic weapon for winning is the grafting technique that everyone in our village has." 42-year-old villager Tian Xiaojun told the reporter, "I started learning grafting at 15. My teacher was my mother, and my mother's teacher was village party secretary Wang Anquan."

In the villagers' eyes, Wang Anquan is not only a village cadre and cooperative head, but also the chief scientific and technological adviser for the village's ecological fruit industry; almost the entire village's grafting skills were passed down from him. Wang Anquan, now 65, first learned fruit tree grafting techniques at 19 through an agricultural technology training class run by the county agricultural bureau.

After decades of exploration and practice, Wang Anquan continuously improved his methods. In the early 1990s, when everyone was still using the branch grafting method, he had already led the villagers to switch to the bud grafting method, putting bud grafting technology nearly 10 years ahead of its local use in Xiangxi. Because the bud grafting method was adopted, the survival rate of fruit tree grafting was higher, the full-bearing period came earlier, and fruit tree varieties were updated and replaced faster.

The cooperative passes on experience and support, and a group of modern agricultural talents grows up

Over the years, Wang Anquan has led cooperative members across the country, providing grafting services for orchards all over China.

"I never expected that after selling hard labor before, I would now make a living with technical skills." Tian Xiangqun told the reporter that 15 years ago she thought she had married into a "poor village," but looking at it now, she married into the right one. As soon as she married into Changputang Village, she began learning grafting techniques. In 2006, when a fruit industry boss from Sichuan came to the village looking for grafters by reputation, she and a group of villagers were hired at high pay to graft fruit trees in Sichuan.

Now, every winter and spring, Tian Xiangqun and many villagers receive orders from various places. In just 3 months, moving between Shaanxi, Yunnan, Guangxi, Sichuan, Chongqing and other places, one female grafter can earn back 20,000 to 30,000 yuan.

Good technology brings high returns. Young people in the village are also willing to learn and work along with it. At present, from grafting services alone, the village can earn more than 4 million yuan.

While grafting technology is continuously passed down, it has also "grafted" a group of modern agricultural talents. In 2002, Wang Anquan obtained a mid-level agricultural technician certificate and became a certified "expert." After him, Ding Qingqing, chairman of the village nursery stock cooperative, also obtained a mid-level agricultural technician certificate, and another 12 fruit growers obtained junior agricultural technician certificates, becoming "title-holding" farmers.

Organized marketing: fruit and nursery stock come out of the mountains

Changputang Village has 1,720 mu of land. Apart from more than 30 mu of cold-waterlogged fields, all of it is planted with fruit. Of the village's 217 households, there is not a single one that does not live off "the fruit business," yet Changputang Village's fruit has almost never had to worry about sales.

"This benefits from the cooperative actively connecting with the market." Wang Bangzhong, director of the Changputang Village committee and chairman of the pomelo professional cooperative, told the reporter that as early as 1998, before the village's first batch of kiwifruit came on the market, he led villagers all the way to Guizhou and other places to set up sales outlets.

In order to let Changputang Village's fruit travel farther, in 2008 the village established the Changputang Kiwifruit Planting Professional Cooperative, carrying out trademark registration, product certification, packaging design, and unified marketing. In 2013, according to variety needs, the village also established a pomelo professional cooperative and a nursery stock professional cooperative. Today, the 3 cooperatives include more than 90% of the village's growers.

Through many years of fruit sales, Changputang Village cultivated a group of marketing experts, 16 of whom obtained rural broker certificates certified by the county industry and commerce department. This capable team active in various places brings in out-of-town merchants and sells the fruit and nursery stock of Changputang Village and even Fenghuang County.

Tian Xiaojun told the reporter that previously nursery stock was sold only in the local market. After joining the cooperative in 2013, the cooperative connected with outside markets, and nursery stock was sold to surrounding counties, cities and provinces, with the price rising from 2 to 3 yuan per plant to 5 yuan per plant.

"In the past, many villagers rode tricycles and set up roadside stalls to sell fruit and nursery stock. After joining the cooperative, sometimes members did not even know that the goods in the orchard had already sold out," Wang Anquan said. Last autumn and winter and this spring, when Xiangxi ponkan faced difficulties in selling, Changputang Village's citrus and pomelos had already sold out before the Spring Festival.

Because Changputang people started fruit marketing early and had broad channels, the village's marketing personnel not only sell the village's fruit, but also actively take on fruit marketing business for the whole of Fenghuang County. More than 90% of the county's kiwifruit is sold by Changputang people.

Planning agricultural tourism to open a path for integrating the primary, secondary and tertiary industries

The good reputation of Changputang Village's cooperative has brought tangible benefits to cooperative members. For example, when members of the kiwifruit professional cooperative need funds to buy trucks for fruit transport, staff at the county rural credit cooperative only need to call Wang Anquan to verify, and with almost no collateral required, they will agree to issue loans, solving their funding difficulties.

At present, Changputang Village's annual fruit output value exceeds 10 million yuan. There are more than 20 large households with annual net fruit income of more than 100,000 yuan, and 90% of farming households have a net income of more than 50,000 yuan. "In our village there is no absolute poverty, nor absolute wealth. There is not much gap between rich and poor. Everyone is single-mindedly striving for a moderately prosperous life," Wang Anquan said. In 2013, the whole village took the lead in Fenghuang County in achieving overall prosperity and a moderately prosperous life, and it strives to be the first in the county to achieve comprehensive moderate prosperity by the end of 2016.

Wang Anquan led the villagers in planning: on the one hand, they should broadly open sales channels geographically, so that Changputang's fruit can be sold farther and sell better; on the other hand, in industrial planning they should take a long-term view and extend the chain, strengthening the industry's ability to escape poverty and become prosperous. Taking advantage of Fenghuang's booming rural tourism, Changputang Village villagers set out to use the ecological fruit industry as a carrier, implement "combining agriculture with tourism," and integrate the development of the primary, secondary and tertiary industries.

Now, in Changputang Village's ecological orchard, with the construction of sightseeing paths, the road of industrial integration is also being opened.