How did laying duck farming build a hundred-million-yuan industry?
"Without the Party's policies benefiting the people and the support of livelihood projects, there would be no today for the development of the breeding industry; without the assistance and preferential policies provided by the Party and the government, there would be no glorious achievement of the number one town for laying duck farming in the whole province and even in East China." These are the heartfelt words of Comrade Zhang Yongyi, president of the laying duck farming association of Ketan Town, Lujiang County, Anhui Province, a spark leader in farmers' path to prosperity, a deputy to the Municipal People's Congress, and a national model worker.
In the autumn of 1999, Zhang Yongyi, who had just graduated from high school, and his father were doing a hatchery business for chicks in Tongcheng City, and they acquired greenhouse laying duck farming technology. He and his father discussed it and decided to invest in building greenhouses to engage in laying duck farming. That year, with the support of the town Party committee and government, he took out a 50,000 yuan loan, leased more than 10 mu of ponds from his production team, and raised a greenhouse of 2,080 laying ducks. Thanks to his diligent study and hard work, he made a net profit of more than 40,000 yuan that year. When the villagers saw that he had made money raising ducks, they all came to his door to learn from him and asked for help in raising ducks to get rich. Zhang Yongyi taught the laying duck techniques to his neighbors without reservation. The next year, he brought 7 farming households in his village into the business, building greenhouses and raising more than 15,000 laying ducks, with an average household income of more than 30,000 yuan, establishing the town's first greenhouse laying duck farming community.
In 2002, as laying duck farming kept heating up and had already achieved good economic returns, more and more farmers saw the hope of prosperity in it. It grew from a dozen or several dozen households to a massive lineup of several hundred households raising laying ducks in greenhouses, and laying duck farming began to spread like a single spark starting a prairie fire.
Zhang Yongyi's status rose accordingly, and he became the backbone and spark guide for the duck farmers. The rapid development of laying ducks in Ketan Town received great attention from the Lujiang County Party Committee, the County People's Congress, and the County Government, which organized multiple visits to the farming communities for inspection, study, and verification, and supported and recognized this people-enriching industry spontaneously formed by farmers. At the same time, the county and town laying duck farming associations also made a commitment to coordinate preferential policies for small loans for farming households, providing each household with 5,000 to 50,000 yuan in support for capital turnover.
Because greenhouse laying duck farming received strong support from county and town organizations and continued to grow and strengthen, in 2003 the first laying duck farming association in Lujiang County, Anhui Province, was established. Zhang Yongyi was recommended and served as its president, with 456 member households in the first batch. In the name of the association, it provided pre-production, mid-production, and post-production services for the vast number of farming households, organized one-household-at-a-time scattered laying duck raising into expanded large-scale farming, and connected with large outside markets to reduce farming risks. At the same time, led by the greenhouse laying duck farming association, it organized farming households to go elsewhere to select and introduce young ducks in a centralized way, ensuring that quarantine, epidemic prevention, and disinfection certificates were all complete and improving the survival rate. It uniformly supplied feed at fair prices, regularly hired experts and professors to come to the community to give lectures, exchange experience, and promptly solve problems in the raising process. As a result, raising experience became richer and richer and sales channels became wider and wider. That year, farming households' net income per greenhouse of laying ducks reached more than 40,000 yuan. This was a number the duck farmers had never even dared to imagine. Only when they received a generous return did they taste the sweetness of laying duck farming and feel Zhang Yongyi's efforts for society and for everyone.
"Without the help of the laying duck farming association, there would be no prosperous life for me today." Xu Zhiping, who lives in Chengchi Village, Ketan Town, said with deep feeling. He got his start with the coordinated loan support of the laying duck farming association. Without capital, it was the association that promptly connected with the credit union and guaranteed a loan for him to buy ducklings. When he had no money to buy feed, it was again the laying duck farming association that coordinated help, enabling Xu Zhiping to make a net profit of more than 80,000 yuan each year for two consecutive years. And the laying duck farming association has benefited not only Xu Zhiping's household, but has provided capital turnover for more farming households having difficulty getting started financially, paying out about more than 2 million yuan in turnover funds each year. Through the organizing, coordinating, bridging, and linking role of the laying duck farming association, the town has now formed 15 laying duck farming communities, more than 1,000 greenhouses, more than 1.2 million laying ducks raised, an annual output of more than 30,000 tons of fresh eggs, an output value of more than 250 million yuan, and an average annual net income per greenhouse of more than 60,000 yuan. Many laying duck farming households have thus embarked on the road to prosperity.
This year, with the support of the town Party committee and government, Zhang Yongyi also invested more than 10 million yuan to build "Anhui Lujiang County Yinong Industry and Trade Feed Co., Ltd.", with an annual production capacity of 100,000 tons, to provide a feed source for greenhouse laying duck farming households.
He invested more than 5 million yuan to establish a poultry egg products processing plant with an annual output of 600 tons, "Anhui Lujiang County Xinguo Food Co., Ltd.", specifically purchasing unsalable culled old ducks and fresh egg products from duck farmers for deep processing and fine processing, extending the laying duck market industry chain through a "company + farmers + sales" model, increasing the added value of laying duck products, and raising the income of farming households.
Zhang Yongyi also relies on the support of innovative scientific research achievements from universities and research institutions such as Zhejiang Agricultural University and Anhui Agricultural University to promote and popularize advanced, standardized farming techniques, spread farming methods that save energy, reduce consumption, save time, and save labor, and provide all-round services for the vast number of farming households.
The Ketan Town Party committee and government have continuously increased support for laying duck farming, listed it as a leading industry for invigorating the town and enriching the people, formulated and issued a series of preferential policies, and organized finance, credit, agricultural technology, epidemic prevention, and other multiple departments to assist, delivering funds, technology, and services to farming households, providing a good development environment for laying duck farming, and making the "cake" of laying duck farming bigger and stronger. In today's Ketan Town, what people see most are laying duck greenhouses dotted everywhere, and what people talk about most are the secrets of getting rich through laying duck farming and the warm policies of the central government in caring about rural areas and farmers. The duck-town farming industry continues to develop and grow, and the surging emotions of the duck farmers are stirring with the melody of spring.
Zhang Yongyi's entrepreneurial spirit and model of leading the people to prosperity have been praised by the Party and the masses. He has successively won the titles of Anhui Province "May Fourth Youth Medal", "Spark Prosperity Leader", and "Outstanding Farmer Entrepreneur". Last May, Zhang Yongyi was also honorably elected as a national model worker.