Visitors Come to the Mushroom Sheds to Learn the Ropes, Everyone Learns Mushroom-Growing Techniques on Site
On a scorching summer day, walking into Zhanhai Village in Zudian Town, Shen County, you will not see a single idle person on the streets; everyone is busy in the greenhouses tending to their own "treasures" - the straw mushrooms.
Zhanhai Village is a provincial-level poverty-stricken village. In 2015, the "First Secretaries" dispatched by the Provincial Quality and Technical Supervision Bureau to Zhanhai Village, Xu Village and Wanglou Village in Zudian Town began carrying out surveys, selecting the right industries, one village one product, to drive villagers out of poverty and toward prosperity. They decided to make use of the village's existing traditions, support distinctive industries and carry out "targeted poverty alleviation." Through their surveys they found that Zhanhai Village had a certain foundation for straw mushroom cultivation, and that growing straw mushrooms was especially high in "cost-effectiveness." From bringing in materials, loading materials, sowing seed to harvesting takes only a short forty-odd days, yet the net income per mu can reach 20,000 yuan - a very considerable income. Through stationed assistance, Zhanhai Village newly developed more than 200 mu of greenhouses, laying a solid foundation for expanding the scale of straw mushroom cultivation. To ensure that growers would have good returns, the village's two committees planned ahead, proactively contacted high-quality spawn enterprises, negotiated prices, settled on spawn, and discussed services, helping villagers choose the right enterprises and good varieties. The village invested in building a wholesale market for edible fungi and vegetables and arranged for designated purchasing points, so that villagers could solve their sales problems without leaving the village.
This year, the villagers' enthusiasm for growing straw mushrooms has soared as never before. At present, nearly a hundred households in the village grow straw mushrooms, with materials brought in alone amounting to more than 3 million jin, an increase of 30% over last year; annual straw mushroom harvest is expected to reach more than 2.4 million jin, up nearly 40% year on year; annual income can increase by more than 7 million yuan, up 30% year on year. It is now the straw mushroom harvest season, and everyone's face is beaming with happy smiles; the first thing people say when they meet is, "How much did you sell today?" Straw mushroom cultivation has not only made growers rich, but also driven the development of related industries. As the cultivation scale expands, corn cobs, used as the culture medium for straw mushrooms, have also been "turned from waste into treasure." In addition, straw mushroom cultivation has solved the "employment" problem for some people in the village; the elderly can go to growers' greenhouses to do some work and earn more than 50 yuan a day, and over a season they can make at least one or two thousand yuan. With money in hand, the smiles on the elderly people's faces have grown even wider.
Seeing the considerable income from straw mushroom cultivation in Zhanhai Village, surrounding villages also became "green with envy," and more and more people came to the village to learn from its experience. Driven by Zhanhai Village, the number of straw mushroom growers in neighboring villages has grown steadily this year. "A couple of days ago, people from the Yutai County Agriculture Bureau also came to our village to investigate," the villagers said, their words full of pride.