Honeysuckle Helps Farmers in Remote Mountain Areas Increase Income and Prosper
Recently, Liu Guomiao, general manager of Changshun Runnong Pharmaceutical Development Co., Ltd., has been very busy. The honeysuckle at the company's planting base has entered the picking season, requiring a large workforce to pick the flowers. To this end, he makes contacts everywhere every day and is kept fully occupied.
Although very tired, Liu Guomiao is happy in his heart, because he has always firmly believed that on this hotbed of development in Changshun, the honeysuckle covering the mountains will become the flower of hope for the company's growth and expansion, and will also free the people in the remote mountain corners from worrying about "gold and silver" flowers.
By this year, Liu Guomiao had been in Changshun for 4 years, and Yingpan Community in Baisuo Town had become the "base area" for him and his company.
Liu Guomiao's Bond with Changshun
Liu Guomiao's hometown is in Shaoyang City, Hunan Province, a nationally famous hometown of honeysuckle. Before 2012, Liu Guomiao and his wife Zhang Zaofeng ran a honeysuckle planting and processing business in Shaoyang. Although the business was not large, thanks to strong planting techniques and a stable market, they could still make a net profit of over a million yuan each year.
Just when the business was flourishing, Liu Guomiao brought his wife to Changshun and established Runnong Pharmaceutical Development Co., Ltd. Regarding this, Liu Guomiao said with a smile that it was all because of fate.
In 2011, out of attention to the Chinese medicinal materials market, Liu Guomiao saw online that Changshun County had an investment-attraction project for planting Chinese medicinal materials. With a try-it-out mentality, he came to Changshun to investigate.
"When I came to Changshun, I saw that this was a poor mountainous area and the people had little income. I thought to myself, Hunan used to be a very poor place too, and people there made their fortunes by planting Chinese medicinal materials. The people here also have the intention to develop Chinese medicinal materials, so I immediately decided to stay and lead them out of poverty toward prosperity." At this point, Liu Guomiao was, as he himself said, like a turtle eating a steel scale - dead set on staying in Changshun to develop.
After the two-day investigation ended, Liu Guomiao returned to his hometown in Hunan full of lofty ambitions and told his wife his ideas, but his wife did not agree. She believed that they had a good foundation in their Hunan hometown and their business was developing smoothly, so going to Changshun to start all over again was undoubtedly risking years of savings.
That night, Liu Guomiao did not sleep well and kept thinking about how to persuade his wife.
The next day, Liu Guomiao began to work on his wife's thinking: Changshun's temperature is more stable than Hunan's, plus there are government support policies, and it is also virgin land where Chinese medicinal material planting has not yet been developed, with a very good foundation of conditions... After some persuasion, his wife decided to go to Changshun again for an in-depth investigation.
"At that time, after we came and looked, we found that Changshun has an altitude of over 1,000 meters, and the climate is very suitable for planting honeysuckle. If the temperature is too high, honeysuckle cannot be grown." After an on-site investigation, Zhang Zaofeng made the decision to support her husband in developing in Changshun.
Having made up their minds, in December 2011, Liu Guomiao and Zhang Zaofeng moved their company and their home to Yingpan Community in Baisuo Town, Changshun County, and in early 2012 established the Huawu Honeysuckle Farmers' Planting Professional Cooperative. Today, the honeysuckle planting scale at the base has grown from the earliest several hundred mu to more than 1,200 mu. In addition to the workers needed at their own base all being local villagers, Liu Guomiao has led many people to participate in honeysuckle planting, with a scale of more than 700 mu.
Honeysuckle Becomes a Flower of Happiness
Villager Wei Changzhen, an elderly person in Yingpan Community of Baisuo Town, has been very busy recently, going to Runnong Pharmaceutical Development Co., Ltd. to "go to work" every day.
"Don't judge me by my age of over 70. Every day I can earn 70 yuan, and in a month I can also make over 2,000." Elder Wei Changzhen told the reporter with a smile: "This is handwork, so it is a bit easier. In the past, using a hoe to plant corn was too laborious. Now by picking honeysuckle and renting my family's 2 mu of fields to the boss, I can also make more than 20,000 yuan a year."
There are many people like Elder Wei Changzhen. While renting out their land to the company, they also work at the company to earn money, and every household has built a small Western-style house.
Liu Guomiao told the reporter that currently more than 50 local villagers pick honeysuckle at the base every day, with a wage of 8 jiao for every 1 jin picked. As soon as the honeysuckle is weighed, the wages are paid on the spot.
In addition to "temporary workers" like Elder Wei Changzhen, Runnong Pharmaceutical Development Co., Ltd. has also hired 6 workers locally on a long-term basis to care for and fertilize the honeysuckle. Most of their land has already been rented to the company, and together with their fixed income from work, their lives are now secure.
Liu Guomiao revealed that in addition to 1,200 mu of honeysuckle, he has also developed more than 1,600 mu of Chinese medicinal materials such as Belamcanda chinensis, Polygonatum odoratum, Chrysanthemum morifolium, Aconitum carmichaelii, and Bletilla striata. Each year more than 3,600 workdays are needed, and over the course of a year, the wages paid to workers alone amount to more than 200,000 yuan.
Shi Qingchang, Party Secretary of Baisuo Town, made a detailed calculation: on the basis of the technical support provided by the Chinese medicinal materials company, establishing some related Chinese medicinal material bases can absorb many people into employment there. The people can not only obtain rent from their land, but also earn income from work. Adding the two sources of income together, a household can reach an annual income of 16,000 to 17,000 yuan, which averages around 4,000 yuan per person, enough to escape poverty.
A Small Enterprise's Big Dream
In the 4 years since coming to Changshun for development, Liu Guomiao's company has been sailing smoothly. On this hotbed of development, the company has continued to grow and strengthen, and he and his wife have struck gold and silver in Changshun County.
In Liu Guomiao's view, an annual income of several million yuan is not their ultimate goal; the enterprise must be made even bigger.
In 2013, Runnong Pharmaceutical Development Co., Ltd. built a Chinese medicinal materials processing plant with a daily output of 40 tons in Yingpan Community, and led local villagers to newly develop the planting of Chinese medicinal materials such as Chrysanthemum morifolium and Belamcanda chinensis.
To protect the interests of the villagers, Liu Guomiao signed guaranteed-minimum-purchase contracts for Chinese medicinal materials with the villagers participating in planting. The guaranteed minimum price for honeysuckle is 3 yuan to 4 yuan per jin, and for Belamcanda chinensis it is 4 yuan per jin, effectively stimulating the people's enthusiasm for planting Chinese medicinal materials.
Under Liu Guomiao's leadership, the Chinese medicinal material planting area in Baisuo Town has now reached more than 2,000 mu, involving 150 farming households, including more than 10 large households.
Shi Qingchang told the reporter that Baisuo Town mainly adopts the approach of applying for projects and providing policy and funding assistance to production-development-oriented farming households. At the same time, by cooperating with Chinese medicinal materials companies, it provides technical guidance to the people. The company builds demonstration bases and guides farming households to participate in planting. Most importantly, the farming households must develop themselves and plant on their own, and the company purchases the products back, so they can obtain a certain profit from the products bought back.