How Small Eggs in Bijie, Guizhou Are Enriching Over a Thousand Villagers
Every morning, in the dozens of chicken houses at the Xinglian laying hen farm in Xinglong Village, Salaxi Town, Qixingguan District, Bijie, Guizhou, the crowing of chickens rises and falls along with pleasant light music, as 50-year-old villager Gu Huaizhu is adding feed.
Gu Huaizhu earns a monthly wage of 3,000 yuan and is also a shareholder in the chicken farm. A year ago, her family was still struggling; her husband was seriously ill, and her two children worked away from home. Zhang Yongjian, the farm manager, persuaded her to buy shares in the chicken farm, helped her get a 50,000 yuan loan to invest, and had her work at the farm. At the end of the year, Gu Huaizhu received a 30,000 yuan dividend from the farm, and with her wages, her annual income reached nearly 70,000 yuan. After repaying the loan, she still had some income left.
In Xinglong Village, there are many other farming households like Gu Huaizhu that escaped poverty by taking out loans to buy shares in the Xinglian chicken farm. At present, the farm has 24 poultry houses, with 780,000 laying hens in stock and a daily egg output of nearly 700,000. At the same time, laying hen farming has effectively extended the industrial chain, including packaging services, vegetable cultivation, and deep processing of eggs, helping over a thousand farming households prosper. In 2015, the per capita net income of Xinglong Village reached 12,000 yuan.
"At first, it was not easy to convince the villagers that raising laying hens could make money. No matter how much you talked until your mouth went dry, the villagers would just blink at you with doubtful eyes, neither agreeing nor disagreeing." Zhang Yongjian decided to find a breakthrough point first. He recruited the more quick-witted villagers to work at the chicken farm and let them participate in management throughout the process. Five or six households with a bit more courage took out loans and bought shares. Seeing that they made money, the number of shareholder households increased sharply the following year, and last year the number of shareholders reached more than 220.
The success of the chicken farm would not have been possible without the help of the local government. It was precisely with the Qixingguan District government acting as a bridge that the chicken farm achieved a direct farm-to-supermarket connection with supermarkets in Luohu District, Shenzhen, and formed a long-term fixed cooperative relationship with large enterprises. After passing quality inspections, the eggs are supplied directly to supermarkets. In addition, another portion of the farm's eggs is supplied directly to farmers' markets. Because there are fewer intermediate links, the profit per egg is nearly two mao more than before.