The entrepreneurial story of quitting a civil service job and returning home to grow kiwifruit
"I think one person making money only enriches one person; it takes more people making money to enrich everyone." This is not only something Zhou Bin, a deputy to the Qianjiang District People's Congress and Party branch secretary of the Shijia Community in Shijia Town, often says, but also something he has been quietly working to achieve all along.
Quitting the civil service to go into business
Zhou Bin is a native of Shijia Town and a member of the Tujia ethnic group. Shijia Town is a high-mountain town with inconvenient transportation, and the villagers live in hardship. His parents scrimped and saved to send Zhou Bin to school, and he studied hard, eventually landing the "iron rice bowl" of a civil service job. He served as deputy secretary of the former Zhoubai Township and Zhongtang Township in Qianjiang County.
In 2001, Zhou Bin, then director of the Enterprise Office of the Shijia District Working Committee, resolutely resigned from the civil service and headed north to make his way in business. "In my early thirties, with the ambitions of youth, I always wanted to go out and carve out a world of my own." Recalling his original reason for giving up the "iron rice bowl" at the time, Zhou Bin said.
In 2003, Zhou Bin was fortunate enough to enter the Department of Automotive Engineering at Tsinghua University to study used motor vehicle appraisal. Two years later, after graduating, he stayed in Beijing and worked in used motor vehicle appraisal, earning a monthly salary of over 10,000 yuan.
Returning home to start a business and establish a cooperative
Unexpectedly, in 2006 he gave up his high-paying job of over 10,000 yuan in the capital and resolutely returned home to start a business. On the basis of thorough investigation and research, Zhou Bin decided to transfer land to develop the kiwifruit industry on a large scale, and set up the Guangyou Kiwifruit Professional Cooperative, expanding the planting scale year by year.
Starting in 2006, he leased 1,000 mu of land in Groups 1 and 5 of the Shijia Neighborhood Committee at a price of 245 yuan/mu through a land transfer method of continuous leasing for thirty years to plant red-fleshed kiwifruit.
At the same time, the farmers whose land was leased were hired as workers in the planting park to ensure their regular income, so that the farmers lost their land but increased their income. Workers employed in the planting park earned at least 60 yuan per day in wages, providing an effective model for large-scale land transfer and achieving intensive land management.
"Developing the kiwifruit industry is about driving villagers to increase their income and become prosperous," Zhou Bin said. A few years later, making full use of his own advantages and studying planting techniques hard, he became an expert in growing kiwifruit.
Registering trademarks to promote shared prosperity
The road ahead is long and far. Comrade Zhou Bin is not satisfied with the status quo. Under the premise of the great era of emancipating the mind and expanding opening up, he is determined to make the kiwifruit industry bigger and stronger, build a brand, go beyond Qianjiang, reach Chongqing, and become known nationwide.
He said: "I grew up in Qianjiang. The economy here is not developed, and the farmers here are not wealthy either. This place needs more people to discover its highlights, take the lead in using existing resources to invigorate the economy and create wealth, so that our hometown folks can all become prosperous together!"
In early 2011, Zhou Bin spent 100,000 yuan to register 4 Madrid trademarks and 5 domestic English trademarks for Shijia kiwifruit, among which the "Guangyou" brand kiwifruit has obtained national green food certification and has applied for the title of Chongqing Famous Trademark.
After that, he began vigorously promoting the benefits of growing kiwifruit and its broad market prospects, actively negotiating kiwifruit orders with buyers from Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Chongqing, and providing planting and management techniques and kiwifruit seedlings to the public free of charge.
Every morning at dawn, Zhou Bin would arrive at his kiwifruit orchard on time. In order to develop the kiwifruit industry and lead the villagers to prosperity, he kept this routine almost every day of the year, rain or shine.
Hard work pays off. The kiwifruit at the base grew well, achieving an output of 380 tons and an output value of 8 million yuan in 2012, driving surrounding farmers to increase their income by more than 2,000 yuan.
Changing the model to diversified operations
Although he had already led everyone onto the path to prosperity, Zhou Bin was still thinking about fulfilling another dream: he planted more than 200 mu of purple sweet potatoes for tourists who come here for leisure to experience rural life.
"Is developing agritourism the dream you want to fulfill?" Faced with the author's question, Zhou Bin gave an answer that surprised everyone: tourists can come and dig and pick purple sweet potatoes for 1 yuan per jin, and all this money will be used to help impoverished left-behind children in the surrounding rural areas.
In order to give the cooperative greater room for operation and further enhance its influence, in March 2015 the cooperative changed its name from the former Guangyou Kiwifruit Planting Professional Cooperative to the Guangyou Agricultural Share Cooperative.
Relying on Zhufo River Ecological Agriculture Development Co., Ltd., the new cooperative takes the development of ecological agriculture as its starting point, changing from single-crop kiwifruit planting to diversified operations, with the development approach of focusing on vegetables, Chinese medicinal herbs, and fruits, supplemented by other agricultural and sideline products.
In the spring of 2015, the Guangyou Agricultural Share Cooperative signed an order with Kerui Pharmaceutical Company to plant 500 mu of medicinal ginkgo and 300 mu of Polygonatum sibiricum (Siberian Solomon's seal). The base can absorb 30 local laborers each year, including providing year-round employment for 14 impoverished people, each with an annual income of 20,000 yuan.
At the same time, the cooperative also brought more than 110 farming households from Groups 3, 5, and 6 of the Shijia Neighborhood Committee and other areas into the cooperative, including 19 registered impoverished households, who planted 350 mu of ginkgo and 150 mu of Polygonatum sibiricum in a dispersed manner. At present, the ginkgo and Polygonatum sibiricum are growing well and will achieve initial production in 2017.
"We will continue to increase the area of transferred land, carry out comprehensive ecological agriculture development, absorb more farming households into the cooperative, further improve the cooperative's various systems, standardize operations, operate legally, and pursue large-scale and diversified development," Zhou Bin stated.
Carrying out poverty alleviation and helping those in need to benefit people's livelihoods
While doing a good job in building prosperity through industry and increasing income, as a rural Party member, Zhou Bin has not forgotten to actively support social public welfare undertakings and carry out poverty alleviation and assistance for those in need.
To date, he has donated 20,000 yuan to Shijia Middle School for subsidies to impoverished junior high school students advancing to higher education, donated 1,000 yuan to 10 girls from rural single-parent families at Shijia Middle School, donated 1,000 yuan to Shijia Primary School, and raised 1,000 yuan himself to deliver love-filled schoolbags to 7 children from disadvantaged families in the Shijia Community. Every year he donates more than 1,000 yuan in money and goods to the Shijia Nursing Home to improve the lives of the elderly under the five-guarantees system.
For this, his honors have come one after another, as he has been awarded honorary titles such as "Qianjiang District Major Kiwifruit Production and Planting Household" and "Outstanding Communist Party Member of Shijia Town."
(Original title: Giving up a high salary to return home and start a business, leading villagers to prosperity together)