Pigment chili peppers pave a path to prosperity for farmers
For consecutive years, pigment chili peppers, with their good quality, high yield and strong returns, have been promoted across many townships in our city through the "leading enterprise + cooperative + farmer" contract farming model, giving our city's farmers another new "magic weapon" for increasing income and achieving prosperity.
Recently, while interviewing in Liangquan Village, Liyi Town, Lingchuan County, the reporter witnessed such a scene: technicians from the city's Guochen Biotechnology Co., Ltd. were busy explaining to more than ten farmers in the audience the matters needing attention during the growth of pigment chili peppers.
The reporter noticed that one person was studying particularly attentively. Upon approaching and asking, it was learned that his name is Li Zengsheng, a native of nearby Yizhang Village, and he had come specifically today to attend the class. In 2013, Li Zengsheng came into contact with the new contract pigment chili pepper project through Guochen Biotechnology. After some investigation, he finally planted 40 mu in 2014, expanded the pigment chili pepper planting area to 80 mu in 2015, and this year expanded the planting area to 100 mu.
Not only has his planting scale grown year after year, Li Zengsheng has also been diligently learning planting techniques, pondering how to increase the per-mu yield of pigment chili peppers. According to him, in 2014 his gross income per mu of pigment chili peppers was 2,000 yuan, and in 2015 the gross income per mu rose to 2,500 yuan. This extra one-fifth was entirely thanks to a few tricks he learned from the technicians. "So, when I learned the technicians were coming down to teach techniques, I rushed over early in the morning to attend the class, striving to learn more about planting and management, and striving for an even better harvest of chili peppers this year."
The profitable contract pigment chili peppers immediately aroused the reporter's interest, and the reporter quickly inquired with Guochen Biotechnology. Yuan Zhiqing, the company's person in charge, told the reporter that pigment chili pepper is a chili variety specially used to extract capsanthin. The natural pigment extracted and refined from it has bright color and strong coloring power, and can be used in high-end food, cosmetics and pharmaceutical fields. At present, developed countries such as South Korea have strong demand for capsanthin, and the entire industry is in a state of supply falling short of demand.
She also told the reporter that our city's main climate indicators, such as temperature, frost-free period, accumulated temperature and precipitation, are all completely suitable for chili pepper growth. Therefore, in 2014 the company began adopting the "company + cooperative + farmer" approach to promote a chili pepper planting base of more than 2,515 mu in Liyi Town and Qinjiazhuang Township of Lingchuan County, as well as Zezhou County, Qinshui County, Yangcheng County and Gaoping City. In 2015, in order to dispel farmers' concerns, the company adopted a "six unifications" contract management approach: unified seedlings, unified technology, unified agricultural materials procurement, unified management, unified purchasing and unified brand sales, and repurchased 100% of all entrusted chili pepper products in accordance with the buyback agreement.
The reporter also learned that in order to ensure the supply of seedlings for local farmers, Guochen Biotechnology has also built a 110-mu chili pepper seedling greenhouse base in Jincun Town, Zezhou County. At present, the company is also preparing to build a chili pepper freezing, drying, crushing, extraction, compression and vacuum packaging processing production line, a processing workshop with an annual processing capacity of more than 20,000 tons of chili peppers, and one 10,000-ton cold storage facility, and in the second phase of the production line it plans to build comprehensive production lines for protein extraction, capsaicin extraction, chili oleoresin extraction and organic fertilizer extraction.
The reporter also learned that the company plans to promote chili pepper planting of 30,000 mu in Zezhou County, Lingchuan County, Qinshui County and other places this year and next, and by developing contract pigment chili pepper agriculture and promoting pigment chili pepper and seedling transplanting techniques, improve the quality and yield of pigment chili peppers, opening up a new channel for our city's farmers to increase income and achieve prosperity.