The Sweet Potato King Was Originally a Fur Trader Who Invested Hundreds of Thousands and Suffered Heavy Losses

In the past she was a businesswoman in the fur trade; today she is a widely known "Sweet Potato King." The cooperative's members have grown from just a few households to more than 2,000, its products sell from the county all the way across the country, and it has expanded from single-crop sweet potato planting to chain-style deep processing, and now to building a scenic area for agricultural sightseeing tourism -- behind every step of growth, Li Zhifen of Dongchengjiao Village, Suyang Township, Yuanshi County, has put in hardships outsiders could never imagine, but no matter what difficulties she encountered, she always insisted on treating people with honesty.

Returning Home to Plant Sweet Potatoes and Lead Her Fellow Villagers to Prosper Together

Wearing a pair of glasses, of medium build, with a crisp, short-to-medium hairstyle -- this is the first impression the 43-year-old Li Zhifen leaves on people. Her bold, forthright personality and blunt way of speaking quickly close the distance between Li Zhifen and others. It is precisely this woman, approachable and without any bossy airs, who became the chairman of the Minxing Agricultural Professional Cooperative in Yuanshi County.

As early as the late 1980s, Li Zhifen, then in the fur business, had already become a well-known figure in Dongchengjiao Village, running a booming business. Whether processing leather or raising rex rabbits back then, the seed of doing business with integrity had already been planted in Li Zhifen's heart. In 2008, with her own family already well-off, Li Zhifen, carrying the dream of leading the villagers to prosperity together, registered the village's first farmers' professional cooperative in early 2009. She made her husband the legal representative to manage the cooperative's day-to-day operations, and supported it with funds from her fur business. "At first we had only 5 member households and just over 80 mu of land, but we found our positioning right away -- the crop would be sweet potatoes -- and drew up a simple development plan for the cooperative," Li Zhifen said.

In the spring of the second year after Li Zhifen's Minxing Agricultural Professional Cooperative in Yuanshi County was founded, the selling price of sweet potatoes rose from 6 jiao per jin to 2 yuan, and the members suddenly planted a lot more sweet potatoes. "After the spring of 2010, when everyone saw the higher selling price, they all rushed to plant sweet potatoes in a swarm, and I blame myself for being inexperienced at the time and not taking timely measures to plan the planting volume," Li Zhifen said. Who would have thought that by the autumn of 2010, sweet potatoes had been over-planted and the selling price plunged from 2 yuan to 3 jiao, and the members panicked. Li Zhifen thought to herself that since she was the members' backbone, she had to grit her teeth and push forward. She actively sought sales channels and helped the members find storage sites and deep-processing options for the sweet potatoes. Even so, more than 200,000 jin of sweet potatoes still could not all be sold. Seeing the anxious looks on the members' faces, Li Zhifen decided to buy up all the sweet potatoes with her own money -- she absolutely could not let her fellow villagers lose money.

Once Again Using Her Own Money to Compensate the Members for Their Losses

After going through this crisis, Li Zhifen decided she had to have a sweet potato cellar belonging to her own cooperative. "When our sweet potatoes wouldn't sell, I ran everywhere looking for cellars to store them, which cost money and was a hassle. If we had our own sweet potato cellar, we could not only sell at staggered times, get a better price for the sweet potatoes and maximize profits, but also hopefully let more villagers see the advantages and actively join the cooperative," Li Zhifen said.

And so Li Zhifen funded it herself, transferred 180 mu of land, and hired people to build a sweet potato storage cellar. But who could have expected that this sweet potato cellar, into which Li Zhifen invested more than 500,000 yuan, collapsed after just over a year of use, and more than 700,000 jin of sweet potatoes were buried underground. "It was just before the 2013 Spring Festival. We organized people to rush repairs all the way to the 28th day of the twelfth lunar month, but quite a few sweet potatoes were still buried in the cellar." Li Zhifen felt terrible. "I founded the cooperative precisely to lead everyone to prosperity together, so why has it been so rough? Should this cooperative keep going?" After thinking it over for a long time, Li Zhifen, who never admitted defeat, decided to let the members enjoy their New Year first and discuss everything else slowly afterward. And so Li Zhifen opened her own safe and, with the money she had earned from the fur business, compensated the members for their losses.

Still, this matter dealt her a great blow inwardly. Her stubborn, never-say-die character, cultivated since childhood, ultimately made her resolve firmly to give up her fur business entirely and devote herself fully to running the cooperative.

With her conviction strengthened, Li Zhifen drew up a new development plan for the cooperative, thinking and exploring on her own while also seeking out agricultural experts to consult and learn from. She decided to start with building roads. "Our village is in a hilly area, and the road up the mountain is extremely hard to travel. If the road isn't passable, mechanized farming is nothing but a fantasy." And so the swift and decisive Li Zhifen took an excavator and started building roads, negotiating in depth with whoever's land was involved and giving economic compensation according to their wishes. In her own words, building roads is doing a good deed for the whole village anyway, and since her own conscience was clear, she was bound to win most people's support. Once the road was through, and after consolidation, Li Zhifen transferred another four to five thousand mu of land, thus solving the land problem.

Over the 7 years since founding the cooperative, Li Zhifen has also summed up a lesson: her own strength is limited, and she should let the village's educated and daring young people take on the heavy responsibilities. Li Shimin of Dongchengjiao Village is one of them. The 28-year-old Li Shimin, after returning from the military in 2014, went to work at Li Zhifen's cooperative. After two years of tempering, he has now contracted 30 mu of the cooperative's land and become an entrepreneur. "I just want these capable young people to grow quickly. Once they develop and more people prosper, won't our Dongchengjiao Village develop even better!" Li Zhifen said.

Now Sweet Potatoes Have Become a Big Industry, and Agricultural Sightseeing Tourism Is Being Built

Relying on honesty, Li Zhifen has won the members' full recognition. Today, Li Zhifen's cooperative has been rated by the Ministry of Science and Technology and the Ministry of Agriculture as a "National Hilly Sweet Potato Industry Science and Technology Project Park." "Now the cooperative's sweet potato and purple sweet potato planting has spread across 6 townships and 28 villages, with a total area of more than 60,000 mu, making it the largest purple sweet potato planting base in the north," Li Zhifen said proudly. The storage cellar newly built by Li Zhifen's cooperative last year is 5 m underground, and along both sides of its long corridor are 20 red-brick cellar chambers, enough to store more than 2 million jin of sweet potatoes.

"The cellar is dry with a constant temperature. Sweet potatoes go into the cellar every November and can be stored all the way until May of the following year," Li Zhifen explained. Add to that the original sweet potato storage cellar holding a million kg, several modern drying rooms, and two sets of chain-style drying furnaces, and they can now develop more than 50 varieties in over 10 major categories, including purple sweet potato drinks, chips, vermicelli, starch noodles and sheets, realizing serialized industrial development of whole purple sweet potato flour processing. In the future they also plan to produce packaged convenience foods and quick-frozen foods.

To speed up the industrialization of sweet potato planting, with strong support and help from the county supply and marketing cooperative and the farmers' cooperative union, Li Zhifen also formally signed contracts with Hebei Shouzhong International Trade Co., Ltd. and the Taiwan Vegetable, Fruit and Flower Technology Development Association to jointly develop a purple sweet potato deep-processing project. The Minxing Cooperative has also cooperated specifically with more than ten units including the Provincial Academy of Agricultural Sciences and Hebei Agricultural University to conduct experiments on new sweet potato varieties, and experiments on disease resistance, drought resistance and continuous-cropping resistance of mountain crops, as well as drip irrigation experiments, with its experience demonstrated and promoted across the province. In terms of varieties alone, there are high-yield sweet potatoes with a yield of 6,000 jin per mu, nutrient-rich purple sweet potatoes, sweet potatoes suitable for roasting, and special starch-rich sweet potatoes -- over a hundred varieties in all.

At present, Li Zhifen's cooperative has transferred nearly 10,000 mu of land in Yuanshi, Zhaoxian and Wuji, as well as Weixian, Guangzong, Longyao and Nangong in Xingtai City.

While the cooperative flourishes, Li Zhifen has also decided to build sightseeing tourism agriculture and has established the Qinglongshan Scenic Area, and Longshan Manor will also open next year. "I want to build this place into a vegetable planting area, a forest and fruit picking area, a livestock and poultry breeding area, a fish pond angling area and a sweet potato deep-processing industrial park, forming a complete agricultural tourism sightseeing experience," Li Zhifen said. She is a typical mountain person, and her greatest dream is to make sweet potato planting achieve even greater "distinction" and lead the villagers to prosper together.