College-graduate couple returns to their hometown to grow peppers, driving more than 300 farming households to prosper together

Yesterday, in Liuqiao Village, Wangjiahe Street, Huangpi District, Chen Qingguang and his wife hauled more than 100 kg of freshly picked thin-skinned green peppers to the "Nonglehong" Pepper Professional Cooperative in Qunyi Village, where the peppers were inspected, weighed and boxed, and box after box of "Nonglehong" peppers were loaded onto trucks bound for the vegetable wholesale market. Chen Qingguang told a Changjiang Daily reporter gratefully: "If we hadn't finally followed President Yang in growing peppers, our family of five would probably have had to go back to our hometown."

Yang Yaming (right) and Yang Lanfen, a married couple, are studying pepper-growing techniques at the base

It turns out that the Chen Qingguang couple came from Henan. A few years ago they brought their parents and children to Huangpi and rented more than 100 mu of abandoned wasteland to farm. At first they grew radishes and corn, but sales were always poor and the whole family lived in hardship. By chance they learned that neighboring Qunyi Village had a "Nonglehong" pepper cooperative that not only provided farmers with unified pepper seedlings and technical services, but also helped with sales. So Chen Qingguang sought out Yang Yaming, the person in charge of the cooperative, hoping to join the ranks of pepper growers. Unexpectedly, after two years, annual income actually reached more than 200,000 yuan. Yang Yaming told the reporter: today the cooperative has driven more than 300 farming households near and far to grow peppers, with a planting area of more than 5,000 mu, and farmers earn more than 2,500 yuan per mu each year.

Husband and wife both return to their hometown to start a business

The post-80s young couple Yang Yaming and Yang Lanfen are the founders of "Nonglehong". Both born and raised in Huangpi, the couple graduated in 2006 from Huazhong Agricultural University (admission scores, program offerings) and Wuhan University of Technology (admission scores, program offerings) respectively. Yang Yaming returned to Huangpi to handle raw material procurement at the sauce factory his father had opened, while Yang Lanfen applied for a job at a company in Hankou and became an accountant.

The sauce factory needed large quantities of red peppers, but local peppers could not meet the factory's demand. To procure high-quality raw materials, Yang Yaming traveled alone through Hebei, Shandong, Hunan, Inner Mongolia and other places. He witnessed the industry's bad practice of abusing food additives, and finally came up with an idea: could he grow peppers himself in Huangpi and thoroughly solve the problem of red pepper supply?

He acted at once. With his father's support, in 2009 Yang Yaming transferred 100 mu of land in Liuzhi Street, introduced and cultivated pepper seedlings, then provided the seedlings to farmers to grow, and finally the sauce factory purchased them in a unified way. However, unexpectedly, what looked like simple pepper growing cost him dearly. Because the pepper variety introduced from Hebei grew too tall, after a heavy wind and rain during Wuhan's plum rain season and the scorching sun the next day, all the peppers that had already set fruit rotted in the fields, causing a loss of nearly one million yuan at once.

The next year, Yang Yaming regrouped and tried again. This time he introduced a new variety from Sichuan, and the harvest was good in the end. But because the pepper variety introduced from Sichuan was too spicy and did not suit local market tastes, it did not sell, causing another loss of more than 500,000 yuan.

After two consecutive years of failure, Yang Yaming, though badly hit, did not lose heart. To support her husband, his wife Yang Lanfen also resolutely quit her company job and returned to Huangpi to strive alongside Yang Yaming. The two studied the market together and delved into pepper-growing techniques. With no funds, they even transferred part of their shares in the sauce factory. In the end they found a pepper variety suitable for growing in Huangpi, and also discovered: supplying raw materials solely to the sauce factory meant waiting for the peppers to turn red, which took too long; while the market demanded large quantities of green peppers, so they could first sell green peppers on the market, and after the last crop of peppers turned red, supply them to the sauce factory.

The couple divided the work: one handled techniques and sought markets outside, the other stayed home doing accounting and management. Pepper growing finally succeeded in 2011. Farmers growing peppers could sell both green peppers and red peppers, and the highest income per mu could reach 3,000 yuan.

Afterward, the couple decided to bring in partners and let farmers buy shares, raised 5.72 million yuan in funds, and established the "Nonglehong" Pepper Professional Cooperative, focusing on developing the pepper industry.

"Company + farmers + market" breaks open the pepper market

A planting scale of 5,000 mu is not the largest in terms of pepper growing in Hubei. But Yang Yaming discovered: most pepper growers in the province grow peppers in a scattered way, and vegetable vendors go to buy them. Once the market is bad, no one collects the farmers' peppers, and they can only let them rot in the fields.

"Nonglehong" initially adopted the "company + farmers" model, with the cooperative uniformly providing farmers with seedlings, fertilizer and pesticides, and then the cooperative purchasing them in a unified way for sale. Although farmers had a guaranteed floor price, when market prices were high the farmers lost out, and because logistics took a long time, green peppers spoiled easily. Yang Yaming and his wife put their heads together and decided to buy several stalls in the Sijimei farm produce market, the Baishazhou farm produce market and the Changsha Haijixing wholesale market. Farmers could go to the "Nonglehong" stalls themselves and sell under the unified "Nonglehong" brand, while the cooperative took a commission of 0.1 yuan per jin. If the market was bad, the cooperative guaranteed the purchase of the farmers' peppers at a floor price.

With the "market" link added, the incomes of the cooperative and the farmers increased rapidly. Yang Yaming also developed pepper-growing models such as traditional open-field planting and greenhouse planting, so the pepper marketing period lasted from May to November each year. The number of farmers involved in pepper growing also increased from more than 20 households at the beginning to more than 300 households. Today, "Nonglehong"'s annual sales of green and red peppers have reached 20,000 tons, with average annual growth always maintained at 10%-15%.

Shenhuang Village in Luohansi Street had more than 10 poor households. After learning about the pepper industry of the "Nonglehong" cooperative, the village party secretary took the initiative to seek out Yang Yaming and his wife. With their help, the poor households grew more than 200 mu of peppers together, and annual income suddenly reached 500,000 yuan, making the poor households grin from ear to ear.