Planting Chinese medicinal herbs becomes a new path for poor farmers to increase income and achieve prosperity
In the height of summer, in Zhaolou Village, Liancai Town at the foot of the Liupan Mountains, stretches of walnut, apple and pear trees on the northern hills are laden with fruit, giving people a sense of a thriving rural ecological economy. Villager Zhao Jinpeng transferred 1000 mu of mountain land to develop a distinctive economy. Now the fruit trees have grown into a forest, and the results of understory medicinal herb planting are beginning to show. Zhao Jinpeng told reporters: "With the help of the government and technical personnel, using agriculture to support forestry and using medicinal herbs to support forestry has become a path that drives farmers out of poverty."
This is a microcosm of the agriculture, poverty alleviation and finance departments of the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region actively advancing the targeted poverty alleviation project.
Since the beginning of this year, all counties (districts) in Ningxia have planned the targeted poverty alleviation campaign down to the village and household level. In accordance with the requirement of "one plan for each village," with the village as the unit, and in light of regional characteristics, resource endowments and current economic development, they have highlighted infrastructure, leading industries and other priorities, and separately formulated implementation plans for key poverty-stricken villages, demonstration villages, "delisted villages" and whole-township advancement, assigning projects down to villages and households and responsibilities down to units and individuals. Following the principles of county as the unit, scale control, responsibility at each level, precise identification and dynamic management, they determined poverty alleviation targets and established files and cards for the poor population, ensuring that poverty alleviation targets "have cards in each household, registers in each village, books in each township and electronic files in each county."
Ningxia's unique geographical environment and climatic conditions have formed medicinal plant germplasm resources with outstanding advantages. The Party Committee and government of the autonomous region attach great importance to the development of the Chinese medicinal herb industry and have designated it as a key advantageous and distinctive industry and a leading industry of the autonomous region. At present, the area of artificially planted Chinese medicinal herbs in the region is 500,000 mu, with 600,000 mu of wild resources restored, total medicinal herb output of 170,000 tons, and an annual output value of 1.56 billion yuan.
Longde County, by introducing and cultivating leading enterprises, has taken the path of combining production, study and research and standardized production. Since the beginning of this year, it has integrated 380 million yuan in funds, deeply implemented the "two leaders" project and the workforce quality improvement project, guided 6,795 poor households across the county to develop Chinese medicinal herb planting and breeding industries, and transferred 3,800 poor people to industrial parks and bases for stable employment, so that the local Chinese medicinal herb industry has funds, technology and talent. The industrial pattern of Longde's medicinal herb planting - "a hundred households processing, a thousand households raising seedlings, ten thousand households planting" - is taking shape. The planting area of Chinese medicinal herbs has reached 275,000 mu, and 2 forest-medicinal herb intercropping bases of more than 10,000 mu and 6 bases of more than 1,000 mu have been established, initially achieving a win-win of ecological and economic benefits.
After implementing "three determinations" targeted poverty alleviation in Shuangyangtao Village, Piancheng Township, Xiji County, poverty alleviation has shifted from "a multi-point blooming model to a fixed-point elimination model, from a single-soldier model to a group assault model, and from a traditional blood-transfusion model to a self-development model." Most people have built new houses, and incomes have increased significantly. "The people's housing has been built, the village office has been put up, the roads have been opened, the dam has been reinforced, and 300 mu of platform land can be irrigated," said Gao Zhan, Party branch secretary of Shuangyangtao Village, happily.
A person in charge of the Yuanzhou District Forestry Bureau introduced that the district has taken "poverty-alleviation delisted villages" as the main battlefield for the new round of returning farmland to forest, and in accordance with the goal of grasping typical village construction on one hand and poverty-stricken village poverty alleviation on the other, has brought the planting area of red plum apricot to 15,000 mu and the planting of goji berry to 26,000 mu. At the same time, adopting the "enterprise + base" model, it introduced 3 companies to plant 20,000 mu of oilseed peony in Zhangyi Nanwan, Hechuan Kangou, Zhaiwa and Guanting Zhanghong respectively, driving surrounding people to participate in local labor employment without leaving home, directly generating more than 3 million yuan in income for 1,500 laborers. In townships such as Sanying, Huangduobao and Touying, seedling enterprises transferred land for 5,000 mu of goji berry seedling cultivation. Land transfer alone increased farmers' income by more than 3.5 million yuan, and income from the goji berry seedling industry will also reach 60 million yuan.
It is understood that the agriculture, poverty alleviation and finance departments of the cities and counties in the Liupan Mountain area have joined forces to actively advance targeted poverty alleviation industrial projects to households, directing poverty alleviation funds to be "subsidized" to households, mutual aid fund projects and "mutual aid funds · thousand-village credit" project funds to be "borrowed" to households, financial credit funds to be "loaned" to households, loan interest subsidy funds to be "subsidized" to households, and insurance to be "insured" to households, accelerating the process of industrial poverty alleviation. This year, 48,000 mu of distinctive planting such as Chinese medicinal herbs and seedlings and 7,000 mu of protected and cool-climate vegetables were promoted; 27,000 head of base cows and 63,000 base ewes were replenished, and 16,000 standard pens and sheds were built.
Recently, relevant departments of the autonomous region formed a research group. After investigating the development of the Chinese medicinal herb industry, they suggested that targeted poverty alleviation is a systematic project. The autonomous region should make full use of the long history of traditional Chinese medicine, coordinate and plan the development of modern Chinese medicine agriculture, Chinese medicine industry and Chinese medicine commerce, cultivate advantageous varieties and large deep-processing products, build distinctive advantageous brands, and achieve value-added and efficiency enhancement across the entire industrial chain.
Our reporter Zhang Guofeng