Mushroom fragrance wafts from a photovoltaic power station in Pingquan, Hebei
Right now, Pingquan County in Hebei Province, located on the plateau beyond the Great Wall, is enjoying crisp autumn weather. Walking into the photovoltaic power station of Huiyong New Energy Co., Ltd. in Lianghou Village, Huangtuliangzi Town, Pingquan County, one sees rows of dark blue solar panels, beneath which are hidden rows of black shiitake mushroom greenhouses. And in each greenhouse, farmers in twos and threes are harvesting shiitake mushrooms.
“The market price of shiitake mushrooms has been very stable this year. By the end of the year, the several greenhouses the village allocated to me can bring in more than 100,000 yuan, so my family won't have to suffer poverty anymore.” said Zou Defu, a villager of Lianghou Village who was harvesting mushrooms, happily.
Lianghou Village, where the Huiyong photovoltaic power station is located, is one of the 84 impoverished villages in Pingquan County. The whole village has 47 registered poor households, with 147 poor people. How to help poor households escape poverty as soon as possible is undoubtedly the most urgent issue. In 2014, when the county brought in Beijing Enterprises Group to invest in and build a 30-megawatt photovoltaic power generation project, they reached a cooperation intention with the owning company to organically combine photovoltaic power generation with poverty alleviation and development, so as to achieve both industry and agriculture at the same time. The foothold was growing greenhouse mushrooms under the photovoltaic panels.
“Developing photovoltaics requires sunlight, while mushrooms prefer shade and moisture. Through a three-dimensional design, 'power generation above the greenhouse' and 'planting below the greenhouse' advance side by side. While organically combining the primary and secondary industries, it helps poor people escape poverty and become better off, achieving maximum comprehensive utilization of land, diversification of farmers' income, and stabilization of enterprise efficiency gains.” introduced Hu Weimin, deputy county magistrate of Pingquan County.
In this setup, the photovoltaic enterprise is responsible for park construction, installing solar panels, building edible fungus greenhouses, and completing basic supporting facilities such as water and electricity. The village committee and the photovoltaic enterprise organize a cooperative to manage it. Through the platform provided by the enterprise and the cooperative, poor households are absorbed into the park to engage in production and operation. All high-risk links such as investment, technology, and sales are borne by the photovoltaic enterprise and the cooperative. Poor households obtain rent through land transfer, wages through working in the park, and cash through renting greenhouses for planting, truly embarking on the road to escaping poverty and becoming better off.
Yang Haiyu, director of Lianghou Village and chairman of the edible fungus professional cooperative, calculated a detailed account for us: at present, the park project covers 1236 mu, and the power station achieved power generation in the same year. A total of 340 spawn-running greenhouses and 1000 mushroom-producing greenhouses have been built, developing 10 million bags of ground-cultivated shiitake mushrooms, with an annual output of 10,000 tons, driving 75 poor households and providing employment for more than 300 farmers from the village and surrounding villages. Calculating on the basis that each poor household adopts and rents one standard greenhouse, each standard greenhouse has 10,000 fungus sticks, and each fungus stick costs about 3 yuan. The average income per stick is 5.76 yuan, and the profit is 2.76 yuan, so a poor household will obtain a net income of 27,600 yuan per year. If income from land and wages is all included, by the end of the year the average income increase per farming household in the whole village will reach 60,000 yuan, and the whole village can escape poverty.
Zou Defu told reporters that in the past, because his wife was frail and often ill, and he still had two children in school, although the family farmed more than 8 mu of land, the average annual income per person in the family was less than 1000 yuan. Since the village built the photovoltaic agricultural edible fungus poverty alleviation park, Zou Defu transferred his more than 8 mu of land to the industrial park at a price of 1000 yuan per mu. At the same time, the village also provided him with two greenhouses free of charge to grow shiitake mushrooms, and the gross income of the two greenhouses in one year exceeded 100,000 yuan. Led by him, his two nephews also joined the poverty alleviation park, and the whole family completely escaped poverty and shed the poverty label within one year.