A mountain boy who returned home to start a business leads villagers onto the road to prosperity

"We need to thin out dense branches, overlapping branches, diseased and pest-infested branches, leggy branches and thin weak branches to improve light and nutrient conditions, so that the fruit can get the nutrients and water it needs..." On June 28, in Group 8 of Shuangfeng Village, Hemian Town, Naxi District, Luzhou City, large crisp red plum grower Ruan Xiaoping was managing the crisp red plums during the fruiting period under the guidance of agricultural technicians.

In 2013, Ruan Xiaoping, who had worked away from home for more than 10 years, returned to his hometown to trial-plant 100 mu of crisp red plums and build a high-mountain crisp red plum planting base. Driven by Ruan Xiaoping, 10 Ruan families - including his uncles and cousins who had been working away from home - returned to their hometown one after another, reclaimed abandoned land and improved low-yield forest, developing 600 mu of high-quality crisp red plums in contiguous plots. Today, 30% of Ruan Xiaoping's crisp red plums have begun trial fruiting, with an estimated output of 25,000 jin and direct economic income of nearly 80,000 yuan.

Learned vegetable growing while working away from home  After six years of hard work, became a "farm owner"

Ruan Xiaoping is 30 years old this year. In 2002, at the age of 16, he graduated from junior high school but did not get into senior high school. After some thought, he gave up repeating a year to retake the exam and followed his uncles and uncle-in-law to work in Tianjin. Because Ruan Xiaoping had no diploma or skills, he could not find work in Tianjin for a long time. Later, with his uncle-in-law's help, he found a job managing a vegetable greenhouse at a vegetable growing company, with a monthly wage of 800 yuan.

"Managing greenhouse vegetables is not only hard work, it also requires skills..." After less than two months in the greenhouse, Ruan Xiaoping realized that he had had too little schooling and that growing vegetables also requires knowledge. So every day after finishing work in the vegetable fields, Ruan Xiaoping would run to the nearby rural library to consult books and learn greenhouse vegetable planting and management techniques. For techniques not in the books, he would go to other planting greenhouses to ask. Half a year later, Ruan Xiaoping's diligence and the high yield and quality of the vegetable greenhouses he managed won him the appreciation of the vegetable company boss. The next year, the boss put him in charge of managing two greenhouses.

So the young Ruan Xiaoping began his own "vegetable growing path" under pressure, starting with being responsible for two vegetable greenhouses and eventually for more than a dozen. His wage also rose from 800 yuan when he first entered the greenhouse to more than 4,000 yuan.

"Growing vegetables for others brings a stable income, but it is not my ideal..." In 2008, Ruan Xiaoping declined the vegetable company boss's offer of a raise to keep him and quit his original greenhouse management job. He and his wife contracted 6 vegetable greenhouses in Bohai Bay with an annual rent of 50,000 yuan. He thought: I have skills and experience, others can make money growing vegetables, so why not be my own boss?

That year, Ruan Xiaoping was 22 years old and became the youngest "farm owner" in Bohai Bay.

Aiming at industrial planning  Returned home to plant crisp red plums

"Xiao Ruan, you have struggled outside for more than 10 years, learned skills and broadened your horizons. The village has a land planning project, and I want to use this opportunity to develop economic fruit crops in the mountain valley. Come back and lead the villagers in doing it." During the 2013 Spring Festival, Ruan Xiaoping returned home to handle his father's funeral affairs, and village Party branch secretary Jiang Xiaolin found him and talked with him about the village's development plan. Ruan Xiaoping was moved by village Party branch secretary Jiang Xiaolin's words. Seeing that large tracts of land at the village entrance had been left abandoned because villagers went out to work was truly a pity. So Ruan Xiaoping decided to bring back the funds he had earned through years of hard work outside and use the abandoned land of his family and neighbors to develop a crisp red plum planting base.

He acted as soon as he decided. In March of that year, Ruan Xiaoping returned home with his wife and children, preparing to develop the crisp red plum industry.

In order to learn and master crisp red plum planting and management techniques as quickly as possible, Ruan Xiaoping studied three times at the crisp red plum base in nearby Gulin County and also visited the Yibin Jiang'an Plum Cooperative to study its cooperative operation model. Weeding and building terraces, digging pits and building roads... In less than 3 months, Ruan Xiaoping spent more than 30,000 yuan to clear and prepare more than 60 mu of barren mountain land, and invested more than another 30,000 yuan to introduce crisp red plum seedlings from Gulin County.

Watching the plum saplings grow vigorously one by one, Ruan Xiaoping had new plans: "Most of the people at this mountain pass are members of the Ruan family. I'll persuade them all to plant crisp red plums, expand the scale of the planting base, and build a base for plum blossom viewing and plum picking experiences..."

"Last summer there was a lot of rain, and more than 200 plum trees died at once, with losses of more than 5,000 yuan..." Ruan Xiaoping's wife Ma Zuxuan did not understand why he had given up a stable income outside and insisted on returning to their poor mountain valley to invest in the uncertain planting industry: "Growing vegetables in Tianjin was hard, but at least we had a monthly income of more than 10,000 yuan. After coming back and working for two or three years, it has been almost all investment."

Hard work pays off. Under Ruan Xiaoping's persistent leadership, 10 Ruan families - including his uncles and cousins who had been working away from home - returned to their hometown one after another, reclaimed abandoned land and improved low-yield forest, developing 600 mu of high-quality crisp red plums in contiguous plots. Today, walking into Group 8 of Shuangfeng Village, the emerald green crisp red plum trees are already taller than a person, one mountain connected to the next, and the plums on the branches are heavy and swaying in the wind.

Policy support  Cooperative leads neighbors to increase income

"The taste of crisp red plums is different from other plums. One person can eat three or four jin at a time. The crisp red plums grown by my relative now sell for more than 3 yuan per jin..." In villager Ruan Mingjun's plum orchard, a group of villagers were discussing the taste and sales channels of the plums. Now, after three years of effort, contiguous crisp red plums have given growers such as Ruan Xiaoping hope of increasing income. At present, driven by Ruan Xiaoping, Shuangfeng Village has developed 600 mu of contiguous crisp red plums, with more than 20 growing households.

In order to help Ruan Xiaoping and other villagers who returned home to start businesses expand the crisp red plum industry, the Shuangfeng Village "two committees" also actively contacted experts from the Provincial Academy of Agricultural Sciences and technical personnel from the Fruit Technology Station of the Naxi District Agriculture Bureau, and repeatedly visited the homes of growers such as Ruan Xiaoping to provide technical guidance, ensuring a good technical foundation for crisp red plums to take root in Shuangfeng Mountain. At the same time, the village also helped Ruan Xiaoping and other growers establish the "Yanran Crisp Red Plum Professional Cooperative", leading farmers to increase income through forms such as "branch + base + cooperative + farmers". "Next, the village will also strive for subsidy funds from projects such as returning farmland to forest and economic forest development to improve our village roads and communication facilities as soon as possible, so that Ruan Xiaoping's 'plum blossom dream' can become the villagers' dream of prosperity," said village Party branch secretary Jiang Xiaolin.

"This plum orchard will be able to bear fruit on a large scale next year. Judging by its current growth, next year's yield per mu will reach 1,800-2,000 kg without any problem. If calculated at a market price of 10 yuan/kg, my 100 mu of crisp red plums can bring in more than 300,000 yuan, which is more worthwhile than working away from home," said Ruan Xiaoping. Once all the crisp red plums enter the full production period, income can increase by at least 30%. "In two years, I plan to interplant crops such as watermelon, Coptis chinensis and Dendrobium in the plum orchard, raise free-range native chickens under the trees, and join with growers to hold plum blossom viewing festivals and ecological crisp red plum picking experience festivals to drive the development of rural tourism.