Sweet potato planting champion shares wealth-building experience

Yin Zhongzuo (left) and the city's village-assigned secretary harvesting violets.

Sweet potato was a life-saving food during difficult times and is the main crop of Lengfan Village in Ancheng Town. However, in recent years the small sweet potato has become the "little golden melon" that has lifted the people of Lengfan Village and even the whole of Ancheng Town out of poverty and toward prosperity. This all traces back to its leader - Yin Zhongzuo, president of the Shanxiang Fresh-Eating Sweet Potato Professional Cooperative and Party branch secretary of Lengfan Village in Ancheng Town.

20 years devoted to sweet potato, a "local champion" rises from a farming family

Yin Zhongzuo, 53 years old, is a native of Lengfan Village in Ancheng Town. He knows sweet potato farming inside out. Lengfan Village has many hills and thick soil, and has a tradition of growing starch sweet potatoes, but for generations the villagers relied on the weather for their living, and even in a good year annual income was no more than 1,000 yuan or so. Poverty spurs change. As village Party branch secretary and village committee director, Yin Zhongzuo always felt the weight of responsibility on his shoulders. To change the poor and backward face of his hometown, he led the villagers in many attempts, growing apples, hawthorn and other fresh and dried fruits, but all ended in failure due to soil quality, water sources, sales channels and other reasons. Yet Yin Zhongzuo's exploration did not end. In 1995, a household in Lengfan Village was selling roasted sweet potatoes in the Pingyin mining area, and business was good. Yin Zhongzuo discovered that this new variety of sweet potato tasted good, had many sales outlets, yielded about the same as starch-type sweet potatoes, and sold for twice the price. Yin Zhongzuo spotted a business opportunity. To be prudent and not let the villagers suffer failure again, in 1996 Yin Zhongzuo trial-planted 2 mu in his own contracted field. By the sweet potato harvest the following year, sales revenue was 2 times higher than before. In 1997, he called on the village's two committee cadres and group leaders to each trial-plant 1 mu, and all the trial plantings succeeded. In 1998, when the sweet potatoes were harvested, Yin Zhongzuo organized villagers to observe on site, and the villagers' enthusiasm for planting reached unprecedented levels. That year, the sweet potato planting area in Lengfan Village reached 300 mu in one go, making it a well-known village specializing in the sweet potato industry.

As the founder of fresh-eating sweet potatoes in Lengfan Village, Yin Zhongzuo has devoted all his efforts to the development of the sweet potato industry over the past 20 years. To introduce varieties that sell well, Yin Zhongzuo personally worked as a loader for out-of-town customers, and many times paid his own way to travel with customers' trucks to Tai'an, Liaocheng, Beijing, Jinan and other places to survey markets. He stayed in the cheapest inns and ate the cheapest meals to obtain first-hand information on market demand and guide villagers in timely adjustments to the varieties they planted. Through this, he also became close friends with customers, established stable cooperative relationships, and Lengfan sweet potatoes were no longer a worry to sell.

After 10 years of development and accumulation, in 2008 Lengfan Village's fresh-eating sweet potatoes grew to 600 mu. Yin Zhongzuo seized the opportunity to found the Shanxiang Fresh-Eating Sweet Potato Professional Cooperative, breaking through traditional planting, boldly introducing new varieties and new technologies, and providing villagers with integrated production, supply and sales services. It radiated and drove more than 30,000 mu of fresh-eating sweet potato planting across the town, achieving annual sales revenue of more than 200 million yuan. Fresh-eating sweet potatoes became the "little golden melon" that increased villagers' income and brought them prosperity, and growing fresh-eating sweet potatoes became one of the pillar industries of characteristic agriculture in Pingyin County. Ancheng Town was therefore awarded the title of Shandong Province's No. 1 Town for Fresh-Eating Sweet Potatoes by the Shandong Academy of Agricultural Sciences, and became the Jinan City Fresh-Eating Sweet Potato Brand Base. The Shanxiang Fresh-Eating Sweet Potato Professional Cooperative was also rated as a municipal-level key farmers' professional cooperative. Yin Zhongzuo was rated as a Jinan City outstanding rural practical talent, a municipal-level advanced village cadre in poverty alleviation and development, and a county-level science and technology demonstration household. He was elected as a delegate to the 12th Party Congress of Pingyin County and a deputy to the 17th People's Congress of Pingyin County, becoming a genuine "sweet potato champion."

Keen on research, brave in innovation

Yin Zhongzuo has made outstanding contributions in the breeding, cultivation and storage technology of fresh-eating sweet potatoes. To solve the problems of rapid variety degeneration and difficulty in storage, he long cooperated with research institutions such as the Shandong Academy of Agricultural Sciences and Shandong Agricultural University to conduct new variety comparison experiments, and selected more than 30 "excellent, special and new" fresh-eating sweet potato varieties with good taste, high quality and good storage tolerance. He also led the introduction of Jishu 22, Sushu No. 8, Red Banana, Laishu No. 1, Longshu No. 9, Violet, Yuzi and other colorful sweet potato varieties, built 20 sweet potato seedling pools and more than 600 sq m of winter-warm sweet potato seedling greenhouses, with an annual capacity to breed 3 million virus-free sweet potato seedlings, provided free of charge to surrounding villagers to improve varieties. At the same time, every year he hired professors from the Shandong Academy of Agricultural Sciences to hold regular science and technology lectures, teach advanced cultivation techniques, spread scientific planting knowledge, and organize villagers to go out for study visits to improve management levels, providing solid technical guarantees for the sustainable development of the fresh-eating sweet potato industry. He also actively participated in the county-wide poverty alleviation and assistance efforts, signed planting and buyback contracts with poor households, purchased at protective prices, and led 700 households across the town out of poverty toward prosperity.

Properly controlling temperature and humidity for cellar storage of sweet potatoes and selling them off-season is another major contribution Yin Zhongzuo has made to the fresh-eating sweet potato industry. Drawing on many years of production experience, Yin Zhongzuo found that after cellar storage, sweet potatoes increase in sugar content and become softer, stickier, sweeter and more fragrant. When brought to market after Spring Festival, the price doubles and the returns are more considerable. So he tried building a new type of sweet potato storage cellar. Through repeated experiments, he worked out a mature set of sweet potato cellar storage techniques and promoted them to growers. The widespread application of sweet potato cellar storage technology extended the sales period and increased growers' ability to control the market. This one item alone increased the whole village's average annual income by more than 1.4 million yuan, and the small sweet potato cellar became the villagers' "underground bank" for getting rich. For more than 20 years, Yin Zhongzuo has taken root in the land, repeatedly undertaken agricultural science and technology projects in Pingyin County such as soil testing and formula fertilization, group prevention and control of diseases, and high-yield research on fresh-eating sweet potatoes, implemented the matching of good seeds with good methods, promoted agricultural science and technology, and always led at the forefront of the promotion and application of agricultural science and technology.

Promoting standardized production, focusing on brand effect

From the very beginning of his career, Yin Zhongzuo set his sweet potato industry sights on the market of Shandong Province. To build a province-wide fresh-eating sweet potato base, he formulated the "Standardized Production Operating Procedures for Fresh-Eating Sweet Potatoes," adopted the "cooperative + base + farmers" cooperation model, and provided "five unifications" in production: unified supply of virus-free seedlings, unified supply of organic fertilizer and harmless pesticides, unified technical guidance, unified storage technology, and unified packaging and sales. He established a "expert + technician + demonstration household" technical service system, providing all-round service before, during and after production and strictly standardizing fresh-eating sweet potato production. He applied for and registered the "Anluanhe" trademark, certified 5 pollution-free agricultural products, and built a pesticide residue testing room for regular self-inspection to ensure that the agricultural products produced were of excellent quality and safe to eat. To create a convenient trading environment and enable villagers' sweet potatoes to be sold smoothly, he renovated and upgraded the fresh-eating sweet potato trading market, built 1,200 sq m of storage and processing workshops and a 1,000 sq m all-weather trading area, bringing the daily sweet potato trading capacity to more than 3 million jin, with annual trading volume soaring to 4.5 million yuan, providing jobs for more than 60 villagers and serving more than 2,000 sweet potato growers. To raise brand awareness and cultivate brand influence, he took the initiative to expand the market, holding a large product promotion event at Quancheng Square and inviting citizens to come and taste for free. The "Anluanhe" brand fresh-eating sweet potatoes won widespread praise from the people of Quancheng and were rated as one of the top ten favorite products of Quancheng citizens in 2010. The products immediately entered supermarkets in more than 10 large and medium-sized cities including Jinan, Tai'an and Liaocheng. Good market returns drove standardized production on more than 10,000 mu of land in more than 20 surrounding villages. The base was also listed as a sweet potato new variety experimental base of the Shandong Academy of Agricultural Sciences and a key supported project base of the Municipal Science and Technology Bureau, leading the town's fresh-eating sweet potato industry onto a track of rapid and healthy development.

In 2013, Yin Zhongzuo made another new attempt - developing "green sightseeing picking agriculture." He set aside a picking area within 1,200 mu of cultivated land and also built a parking lot in the village. As soon as autumn arrived, the cooperative posted picking tour information on the Pingyin agricultural science and technology information website. That year, more than 40 people came to dig sweet potatoes. Last year the cooperative held five picking events in a concentrated period. Tourists learned while digging and roasted while eating, having a wonderful time.