Wild Boars Root Out a Path to Prosperity in Jianghua Yao Autonomous County, Hunan

When people hear "wild boar," they picture its long tusks, jet-black fur and fierce temperament, enough to make anyone shrink back in fear. But He Jun, a villager from Shibitang Village in Baimangying Town, Jianghua Yao Autonomous County, is able to live in harmony with wild boars.

The story of how he got into wild boar farming begins with his experience as a contractor of mountain forest. During one patrol of the mountain with a companion, he discovered a litter of wild boar piglets. The sow was too fierce, so they did not dare approach and hurriedly called in an old hunter to help capture them. After a fierce struggle, the sow was shot dead. But faced with these 8 piglets, they were at a loss. Eat them? They were too small. Keep them? None of them had ever raised wild boars. Still, because they lived in the Yao mountains, they occasionally got to eat wild boar meat; its thick, chewy skin and delicious meat were far beyond anything an ordinary domestic pig could offer. He Jun figured he had experience raising domestic pigs, and the wild boars had been found on his own mountain, so he made the decision to keep them, hastily building a one-meter-high fence to enclose them and raising them on his own mountain. At first he had no thought of large-scale farming; he just planned to let them grow up for his own family to eat.

But within a few months, the wild boars began dying one after another, all of them suddenly gasping for breath and dropping dead while still lively and active. There were no other wild boar raisers nearby, so why was it that wild boars could not survive when raised the way domestic pigs were? He Jun, who loved to mull things over, began asking experts again and again, and came to realize that wild boars need a large range of activity and must be raised free-range. In addition, domestic pigs generally need special feed, whereas wild boars eat melons, fruit, wild grasses, wild vegetables and even small wild animals, so the cost of raising them is relatively low. As he learned more and more about wild boars' habits, He Jun became full of interest in the wild boar market. He could perfectly well adapt to local conditions and try raising wild boars in the mountain forest, so he asked around among friends, used his savings to buy 20 improved special wild boars and released them to range on the mountain.

One early morning, the village party secretary called him to say his wild boars were ravaging the villagers' cornfields. He rushed over to look, and good grief, they could not even be driven away: when you came they ran off, and when you left they came back. They simply would not stop until the cornfield had been eaten down to the last stalk. The constant complaints from villagers gave He Jun the idea of fencing off the mountain with wire mesh. But his savings had been invested and he had not yet recouped it, so where would he find spare money to fence the mountain? Right below the mountain were the villagers' houses, and it would be terrible if the boars attacked people. He borrowed money from relatives and friends, but it was still not enough. Looking at the half-built fence, He Jun did not want to give up. When he tried approaching the government, the difficulty was solved at once: the town government and the village committee helped him coordinate and resolve the site issue, and the village committee even stood as his guarantor, enabling He Jun to successfully obtain a loan of 80,000 yuan from the county employment bureau, completely easing his urgent need.

And so, with his willingness to endure hardship and his persistent spirit, He Jun set out on a path to prosperity through wild boar farming. Three years have passed, and He Jun happily told this writer that because the boars grow for a long time in a good environment, wild boar meat was well received as soon as it hit the market. Today his farming scale has expanded from the 20 head of those days to more than 300, and the price of wild boar meat has risen to around 80 yuan per kilogram. This year, he expects a total of 180 wild boars to be sent to market, and calculating at 70 kilograms per head and 80 yuan per kilogram, his income is expected to exceed 1 million yuan.

Talking about his future plans, He Jun said: "Now the entrepreneurial policies here in my hometown are good. I also want to plant fruit trees in the mountain forest, develop ecological agriculture, and prepare to set up a training and breeding cooperative and other measures, so that the pigs thrive and more villagers are driven to prosper through farming."