Graduate student Zheng Peikun returns home to raise pigs and start a business, all to keep a promise
On Cengong County's journey out of poverty, there is a man who earned a million-yuan annual salary and was still a graduate student at Huazhong Agricultural University. To fulfill a childhood ideal and promise, he resolutely quit his job and returned home to start a business, setting up a pig farm and leading the local villagers to prosperity together. He is the graduate student pig farmer Zheng Peikun. Setting out on the road home to start a business to fulfill a childhood dream
Zheng Peikun, now 34 years old, is a native of Tashan Village, Dayou Town, Cengong County. He is the owner of a large pig farm and the head of "Cengong County Hefeng Breeding Professional Cooperative," and is also a graduate student at Huazhong Agricultural University. When a graduate student returned home to become a pig farmer, the local people at first found it hard to understand.
"I have an uncle in the village who was the village animal disease prevention officer. When I was little, I often followed him to give injections to the village's poultry. Seeing those sick poultry recover after my uncle treated them, I thought this profession was very noble." Zheng Peikun told this writer that at the time, farmers relied entirely on oxen to plow the fields, and their source of income depended on selling fat pigs, chickens, ducks and other livestock. If a plow ox or pig got sick and died, a family could become poor because of it. From then on, he wanted to become a veterinarian like his uncle one day. "Seeing how fascinated Zheng Peikun was with veterinary medicine, I joked with him at the time and said, if you get into university in the future, go study veterinary medicine, then come back and lead the villagers to develop livestock breeding and get rich." Zheng Peikun's uncle Zheng Erfen said he never expected that a childhood joke would actually come true.
Zheng Peikun once worked at a foreign company and successfully started his own business in Daye, Hubei, with an annual income of over one million yuan.
During the 2012 Spring Festival, Zheng Peikun brought his wife and children home to visit his parents. He found that most of the young and middle-aged people in his hometown had gone out to work, leaving only the elderly and children behind in the village, which caused a large amount of land to lie abandoned. He felt somewhat sad and thought about doing something for his hometown. After thinking it over, his childhood dream surfaced in his mind. Yes, he would develop livestock breeding in his hometown, lead the villagers to prosperity, and keep them from having to go out to work anymore.
After asking around and investigating, Zheng Peikun found that his hometown had a large market space and high profits for pig farming. In addition, the local Party committee and government also attached great importance to young people returning home to start businesses, so Zheng Peikun decided to return home to start a pig farming business.
As soon as the Spring Festival was over, Zheng Peikun found several farming households in his village group and talked with them about his idea of returning home to start a business, and gained everyone's support. Zheng Peikun immediately leased more than 20 mu of land in Taoshuwan in the village, began building pens, and specially invited experts from the county animal husbandry bureau to carry out on-site planning and design. In March, construction officially broke ground on a standardized pig farm with an annual output of 5,000 head.
In May 2013, the pig farm had completed its infrastructure, but the funds had far exceeded the initial budget. Yet Zheng Peikun did not bow to difficulties. While applying to Dayou Credit Union for a loan, he also began arranging the introduction of breeding pigs. In July of that year, he introduced 140 breeding pigs from COFCO Group in Wuhan, and at the same time applied to the county rural credit union, inviting leaders from the county rural credit union and the local government to inspect and guide the work at the breeding base. They were moved by Zheng Peikun's spirit of hard work and honesty and trustworthiness. Through coordination by the local Party committee and government, the county rural credit union decided to lend Zheng Peikun 500,000 yuan as working capital.
In June 2014, the first batch of pigs began to be marketed, and funds began to flow back. Zheng Peikun repaid the loan in time. After his entrepreneurial story spread online, it received even more praise from netizens in various places. In July 2015, relevant leaders of Dafang County, Bijie City, led breeding and farming households to his pig farm for an inspection, and sincerely invited him to provide technical guidance locally. Joining hands with neighbors to prosper together
"A person without credibility, one does not know what he can do." Zheng Peikun well understands that if an enterprise wants to develop actively and healthily, it must uphold the concept of "honest operation" from beginning to end.
"Tashan Primary School had no table tennis tables, and Zheng Peikun was the first to donate funds. The road leading to the senior activity center needed to be paved, and Zheng Peikun was the first to donate funds." Villager Zheng Ersong told this writer that Zheng Peikun always delivers on what he says. In 2012, when the village needed to build a road, Zheng Peikun promised to contribute 10,000 yuan. Later, when road construction began, he immediately donated 10,000 yuan.
With Zheng Peikun's help, Zheng Ersong now sells home-distilled liquor while also raising pigs.
"Zheng Peikun is a university student, has technical skills, and is trustworthy. Everyone believes in him." Zheng Ersong said that he can now market more than 40 fat pigs a year, with a net profit of more than 60,000 yuan. Adding liquor sales, he can earn more than 100,000 yuan a year.
Others raising pigs at home like Zheng Ersong include Wan Yujun of Taoshuwan Village and Xiang Jiaxiong, deputy secretary of Tashan Village. With Zheng Peikun's help, they not only made money but also built small Western-style houses.
With support from Party committees and governments at all levels and relevant units, in 2015 Zheng Peikun invested more than 5 million yuan in succession to build one sow barn of more than 600 sq m, two farrowing houses of more than 400 sq m, two nursery houses of more than 500 sq m, five finishing houses of more than 1,800 m, more than 300 sq m of office and accommodation space, a feed processing workshop of more than 260 sq m, one artificial insemination laboratory, one disease diagnosis and treatment room, one 2-mu fish pond, three water storage tanks with a total of 2,000 cubic meters, a 150-cubic-meter harmless treatment pool for dead pigs, a 300-cubic-meter biogas digester, and a 400-cubic-meter three-stage sedimentation sewage treatment pool, more than 3,000 m of sewage ditches, and infrastructure such as the pig farm's "three connections" of water, electricity and roads.
In order to expand the scale of the farm and also align with the market, Zheng Peikun registered and established "Cengong County Shuangnong Animal Husbandry Co., Ltd." with the county industry and commerce bureau. With the company and funding guarantees in place, Zheng Peikun decided to mobilize local people to jointly take the path of "mountain ecological agriculture industrialization," engaging in pig farming and specialty planting.
In order to relieve the people's worries, Zheng Peikun established the "Cengong County Hefeng Breeding Professional Cooperative" and fulfilled his promise to ordinary people: each impoverished household was given more than 5 piglets free of charge, and they were provided with breeding technology and disease prevention materials. In addition, the company provided the people with more than 300 pig breed improvements each year, with direct economic benefits of more than 30,000 yuan after improvement. After sewage was harmlessly treated through biogas digesters, electricity and heating were supplied to the people, biogas slurry was used for fish farming in ponds or agricultural irrigation, and biogas residue was used as fertilizer for crops, driving ordinary people to plant more than 300 mu of cash crops, such as pumpkins, all of which the pig farm bought back. The people could earn more than 2,000 yuan per mu, and each farming household could directly earn more than 6,000 yuan. Each year the pig farm also provided the people with more than 800 tons of biogas fertilizer, improving more than 30 mu of land, with direct benefits of more than 10,000 yuan, and solved employment for more than 400 people. So far, it has driven more than 300 surrounding households to develop together.
This year, the town adopted the model of "company + cooperative + base + impoverished households." Pens were built uniformly with national project poverty alleviation funds and provided to impoverished households free of charge. Impoverished households participated by investing 50,000 yuan from targeted loans, while Zheng Peikun invested 1 million yuan and provided technical guidance. At present, site selection for the pens has been completed, and infrastructure construction is expected to be completed and put into use by the end of this year. After production begins, it will help more than 70 impoverished households and more than 200 people in the village all escape poverty by 2018.