A single gerbera daisy turned a farmer's daughter into a skilled income earner
The gerbera daisy is a common cut flower in the floral market, favored by flower growers for its large market consumption and high planting returns. Six years ago, Qin Yulian, a farmer's daughter from Hai'an, graduated from Nanjing Forestry University. After drifting away from home for two years, she returned to her hometown to start a business growing gerbera seedlings, beginning a wonderful career.
On the morning of August 9, the reporter walked into a farmhouse courtyard in Group 13 of Xinghua Village, Qutang Town, Hai'an. “The gerbera seedlings are cultivated right here.” A village official led the reporter up to the second floor. Through the window, row upon row of tiered shelves held glass bottles inserted in them, as if stepping into a laboratory.
“Gerbera seedlings fetch a good price on the market and are in short supply.” The owner Qin Yulian's father interjected, saying the seedlings in the greenhouse had long sold out, and the seedlings cultivated in glass bottles at home would be ready to transplant into the greenhouse by September, with the earliest batch hitting the market in January next year.
The gerbera daisy is a high-return flower variety. About 4,000 gerbera seedlings are planted per mu, and each plant can yield 70 to 80 cut flowers per year, harvestable for 3 consecutive years. At 0.8 yuan to 1 yuan per cut flower, the net profit per mu reaches about 50,000 yuan. The huge economic benefits have driven the rise of the gerbera seedling industry, but this field has high barriers and great technical difficulty, not something ordinary investors can get into. According to Qin Yulian's understanding, only about 10 enterprises or individuals nationwide are engaged in gerbera seedling cultivation, and in Jiangsu, including herself, there are only two. Currently, Qin Yulian has 5 mu of constant-temperature seedling greenhouses, which, at 4,000 plants per mu, can supply 150 mu of planting. Whether in terms of startup or scale, she ranks among the juniors in the industry.
“Gerbera seedlings are extremely delicate during the cultivation process.” Qin Yulian said that once bacteria or viruses invade the glass bottle, the entire bottle is ruined. If environmental disinfection work is not done properly, it can easily wipe out an entire batch of seedlings. She once had a profound lesson, losing more than 100,000 yuan in one instance, wiping out the money the family had saved to build a house.
“How good the quality of gerbera seedlings is generally only becomes clear after two years of growth.” Qin Yulian said that in the eyes of flower growers, her gerbera seedlings basically come from fixed channels, and growers generally reject seedling producers they don't know or understand, which is also an important reason why ordinary people dare not easily enter this field. In the first year, Qin Yulian and her father transported 100,000 painstakingly cultivated gerbera seedlings to the Hangzhou flower market, only to be snubbed, selling just 30,000, with the remaining 70,000 promised to flower growers on the basis of “pay after they bloom.” In reality, Qin Yulian knew in her heart that without taking the gamble, this batch of gerbera seedlings would be completely wasted. That year, Qin Yulian lost more than 100,000 yuan. “Looking back now, that move was wise, because it let the flower growers understand and become familiar with the quality of our gerbera seedlings, thereby establishing a long-term supply relationship.”
Picking up a seedling glass bottle for a closer look, the culture medium was gelatinous like jelly. “This solid nutrient solution contains dozens of medicines and nutrients.” Qin Yulian said that through constant exploration and accumulation, she mastered the core technology of gerbera culture medium formulation, giving the cultivated gerbera seedlings strong disease resistance and a high rooting rate, attracting many merchants from Zhejiang and Kunming who previously bought gerbera seedlings from Shanghai. Over several years, Qin Yulian's customers have grown to more than 10, making her a widely known skilled woman income earner.
“I plan to expand the scale a bit more and develop other varieties, such as strawberries, roses, and dendrobium, all of which can be tissue-cultured, with large market demand and high commercial value, but right now I can't hire anyone.” Speaking of her next plans, Qin Yulian seemed somewhat troubled. Sun Dejuan, the village women's director nearby, interjected that nowadays young people in rural areas either go out to work or work in factories in town, leaving only the elderly. Many people starting businesses in rural areas encounter a labor shortage and cannot find suitable workers. Qin Yulian said she has an idea: move the bottle-stage seedling cultivation work of gerbera to the town, “organize those young women who accompany their children studying in town, give them something to do and increase their income, while enabling myself to develop faster.”