Yi Village Mushroom King Li Zhongyi Upgrades Cooperative to Lead Villagers to Prosperity

Teach a disciple and starve the master? Li Zhongyi, named one of the first "Good Leaders" in Luquan's first hundred-day battle for poverty eradication and general manager of the Zhongyi Walnut Planting Professional Cooperative, does not see it that way. "Agricultural industry cannot extend and grow strong without scale, and professional cooperatives are the bridge that links scaled-up industries," he said. For sustained poverty eradication, he is willing to cultivate cooperatives and train talent free of charge. Since founding Luquan's first specialized scaled cooperative in 2009, the "disciples" he has mentored have made cooperatives blossom everywhere in Luquan, and the "company + farmers + cooperative" agricultural poverty eradication model has become a consensus throughout Luquan.

Venturing Out to Seek a Path Out of Poverty

Li Zhongyi, now 64 years old, is a plain-spoken man of the Yi ethnic group from Zhongping, Luquan. "He is our master; it was he who guided us in Sayingpan to plant medicinal herbs, grow peaches and build cooperatives. He was our earliest guide to prosperity," said Qian Shiquan, head of the Ganhaizi villager group of Shuxi Village Committee in Sayingpan Town and chairman of the Ganhaizi Village Professional Planting Cooperative.

As early as the beginning of the 1980s, when the spring breeze of reform blew into the land of Luowu, Li Zhongyi chose to go out and seek a way out of poverty. At that time, Luquan had no major roads; riding an old Jiefang truck, winding along tortuous mountain roads, bumping along for four or five hours... by the time he arrived in the county seat to "seek guidance," he was already covered in dust. When he saw the booming wild mushroom trade at the crossroads, he struck up conversations with traders and suddenly saw the light.

"We really were guarding a mountain of treasures without knowing it," Li Zhongyi said. His hometown's rich wild mushroom resources were the treasure for prosperity. So he returned to Zhongping and began planning a mushroom business. After borrowing 1,000 yuan from the bank, he embarked on a ten-year career as a mushroom trader. The townships, Luquan and Kunming became the places where Li Zhongyi accumulated connections, experience and capital.

Wild Mushrooms Spread Their Fragrance at Home and Abroad

"I want to start a company; this is the same principle as needing to build cooperatives for the industrialization of poverty eradication today," Li Zhongyi said. To make the wild mushroom industry big, a company had to be established. In 1994, Li Zhongyi founded Kunming Luquan Masino Green Biological Resources Development Co., Ltd. and served as general manager, taking the lead in developing the wild mushroom market in Yunnan.

To open up sales channels, Li Zhongyi set up the company in Chengdu and launched recipes for more than 80 varieties of wild edible mushrooms, including matsutake, morel and porcini. He combined mushrooms with local hot pot to develop "Mountain Treasure Mushroom King Soup," whose fragrance spread across more than 20 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions in China. At this time, Yunnan's wild edible mushrooms were also exported to Italy, France, Switzerland, Thailand, Malaysia and other countries.

In 2001, the Yunnan Edible Fungi Industry Association was established, and he was elected vice chairman. In 2002, he again took the lead in developing and promoting the cultivation of king oyster mushrooms and tea tree mushrooms in cold storage rooms in Yunnan, achieving good economic returns. The Kunming Wild Mushroom Trading Market and the Wild Mushroom Food Street in Guandu District were also brands established back then through the painstaking efforts of him and members of the Edible Fungi Industry Association.

Returning Home to Lead Every Village to Prosperity

In 2007, after 30 years of struggling away from home, he returned to his hometown of Zhongping, bought more than 1,000 mu of barren hills and set his sights on the walnut industry. At the same time, he mobilized farmers in nearby surrounding villages to plant, and established a walnut planting industry association. Through action, he fulfilled the promise he made when he first went out: to return and lead everyone to prosperity.

This year, the Luquan Zhongyi Walnut Planting Professional Cooperative mobilized a large number of registered poor households to join the cooperative, rented 3,000 mu of barren hills in Houqing Group of Andongkang Village, Zhongping Town as a base, and planted nearly 1,500 mu of walnuts, 128 mu of Paris polyphylla var. yunnanensis, 287 mu of Yunnan costus, 218 mu of Dipsacus asper, and 380 mu of Aconitum vilmorinianum.

At present, the cooperative has developed 960 member households, including 916 farmer member households. The industry radiates to Andongkang Village Committee, Shuduo Village Committee, Zhongping Village Committee and 1,240 non-member farmer households in related village committees of neighboring Sayingpan Town, providing employment for 129 surplus rural laborers and directly driving 56 poor households to achieve an average household income increase of 2,576 yuan.

"Yi Village Mushroom King" Explores Forest Manor Tourism

Starting in 2009, no one knows who began calling Li Zhongyi the "Yi Village Mushroom King," and this title still resounds throughout Luquan today. "There is some truth to it, after all, I started out in wild mushrooms," Li Zhongyi said with a smile.

"It can be said that the establishment, operation and planting direction of our cooperative all relied entirely on the master," Qian Shiquan said gratefully. In 2009, Li Zhongyi went to Lijiang to introduce snow peach seedlings, purchased seedlings and gave them free to farmers to cultivate, and he was one of them. Later, a snow peach cultivation association was established, developing more than 50 members, and he was one of them too.

"The Ganhaizi Chinese Medicinal Herb Planting Cooperative that Qian Shiquan built in Shuxi Village Committee of Sayingpan after 'graduating' is not only a 'graduation project' submitted to Li Zhongyi, but also a demonstration project for poverty eradication throughout the county," said Zhao Zhongshan, director of the Luquan County Forestry Bureau. Li Zhongyi trained farmers free of charge and provided technical support and seedlings, which is equivalent to delivering prosperity directly into the hands of poor households. At the same time, he also contributed nearly 200,000 yuan to build the connecting road for the base and Gangbian, making travel easier for surrounding farmers.

Now, Li Zhongyi's cooperative is "returning to its old trade," but unlike before, this time he is exploring "contracting mountains to grow mushrooms and experience leisure agriculture," combining past models such as production, supply and marketing and under-forest intercropping with the concept of urban farm tourism, and introducing the concept of forest manor leisure tourism.