Shaping Town's barren slopes turn into a gold mine, bearing fruit of prosperity
Recently, on the hillside at the junction of Exing Village, Guofan Village and Zhaoshan Village in Shaping Town, Ebian Yi Autonomous County, this writer saw patches of kiwifruit vines growing well, with fuzzy fruit hanging all over the branches; the once "barren land" is now full of life. Local people say all this is thanks to Huang Fengjun of Guofan Village in Shaping Town, who was the first to plant kiwifruit here and led the villagers to prosper together.
The kiwifruit base is laden with fruit
"Everyone pay attention: if you find any kiwifruit vines that haven't climbed onto the trellis while weeding, let the vines climb up along the trellis posts in time." That day, at the base of the Ebian Jinguowang Planting Professional Cooperative, located at the junction of Exing Village, Guofan Village and Zhaoshan Village, cooperative head Huang Fengjun inspected the growth of the kiwifruit while instructing villagers to strengthen care and management. Looking out, under the sunlight, each cement post was covered with green kiwifruit branches and leaves, one slope after another, extending into the distance and up to the mountaintop. Up close, the branches and leaves were covered with fuzzy kiwifruit.
According to Huang Fengjun, the base grows Hongyang kiwifruit, Jinyan kiwifruit, Jinguo kiwifruit... All kinds of kiwifruit grow with lush branches and leaves, and strings of kiwifruit, large and small, hang from the trees, very tempting. "These little guys cost me a lot of effort back then." Looking at the promising kiwifruit, Huang Fengjun could not help but sigh.
"Speaking of it, I have quite a fate with kiwifruit." Recalling his early experience of planting kiwifruit, Huang Fengjun said that during a trip to Shanxi, he happened to see kiwifruit planted by others looking especially charming, and at once had the idea of developing kiwifruit planting in his hometown and leading the villagers to prosperity.
After returning home, through field visits and repeated verification, Huang Fengjun invested 3.5 million yuan in Exing, Guofan and other villages in Shaping Town at an altitude of about 1,200 m, and transferred more than 800 mu of idle land and barren hillside in one go. "This place is far from the urban area, with an excellent ecological environment, four distinct seasons and ample sunlight, making it quite suitable for kiwifruit growth," Huang Fengjun said.
That year, Huang Fengjun trial-planted 290 mu of kiwifruit. Just as success seemed near, a staff mistake during fertilization accidentally buried the fertilizer, and within a few days all the kiwifruit roots and stems had rotted. Seeing the withered leaves all over the mountain, Huang Fengjun felt as if his heart were being cut. "An investment of several million yuan was gone just like that. What should I do?" Recalling the hardships of starting the business, Huang Fengjun still felt lingering fear, saying, "I cared for these kiwifruit like my own young children. Seeing all my effort gone overnight, that kind of heartache is beyond what ordinary people can imagine."
In 2014, Huang Fengjun received support from Ebian's post-disaster reconstruction planting project, which reignited his entrepreneurial passion. "The key to growing kiwifruit well is having solid technical skills." The earlier failure made Huang Fengjun understand the importance of technology. Pujiang, Dujiangyan, Guangyuan, the Provincial Academy of Agricultural Sciences... Over several years, whenever he had time, Huang Fengjun went out to learn techniques. From seedling raising and grafting to fertilization and pollination, he did not skip a single step. Now he is virtually a professional technician in kiwifruit planting, and the skills of the workers at the base have also improved considerably.
Staff from the county's Agriculture Bureau told this writer that, in order to encourage the cooperative to lead more farming households to prosperity, the agriculture department increased its support for them, successively granting the cooperative 100,000 yuan each for base drainage ditch and farming road reconstruction and expansion support projects.
Leading the masses to increase income and prosper
"I'm over 60 this year, getting old and without skills; if I went out to work, surely no one would want me. Now it's good, I can earn money right at my doorstep." "Working here is good. I can earn tens of thousands of yuan a year, still do the farm work at home, and also take care of my family."... That day, Azhi Qusha, a villager from Group 4 of Guofan Village, and Chiri Ganbu, a villager from Group 5 of Exing Village, who had worked at the base year-round, chatted while working. To lead more villagers to prosperity, in 2011 Huang Fengjun took the lead in establishing the Ebian Jinguowang Planting Professional Cooperative, absorbing 102 member households. In addition to land transfer fees and labor fees, farming households joining the cooperative also receive a 10% profit dividend. At present, the cooperative has helped more than 300 farming households prosper.
Enjoying flowers and picking fruit, experiencing farm work, feeling ethnic culture... In recent years, Ebian has combined the county's conditions, adapted measures to each village, deeply tapped ethnic culture and ecological elements, vigorously developed one village, one product, and supported the development of specialty agriculture and farmhouse entertainment projects. The farmhouses in Xianfeng Village with pastoral scenery and Jiefang Village with ethnic customs have begun to take shape, and while driving local industrial development and eco-tourism, they also bring economic benefits to the villagers.
"Of these 800 mu of kiwifruit, some have already begun to bear fruit for the first time, and this year's output is about 15 tons. In one or two years, when they enter the full production period, it is estimated that the more than 16 million yuan invested in the early stage can be recouped within 5 years." Huang Fengjun told this writer that the cooperative is currently accelerating negotiations on a sales cooperation agreement with a fruit company in Guangdong, and speeding up e-commerce development to achieve simultaneous online and offline sales. Next, taking advantage of the county's opportunity to vigorously develop rural tourism, with the base as the carrier and ecology as the feature, they will speed up hardening the farming roads, build new facilities such as a swimming pool and fish ponds, and strive to turn the base into a farmhouse entertainment integrating fruit planting and farm-work experiences, working to lead more farming households onto the road to prosperity.