Pig Farming Helps Zhang Fengying Get Rich
In 2016, pig farmers welcomed the long-awaited "Golden Pig Year" - pig prices soared. These past two days, Zhang Fengying, a major pig farmer living in Barun Hadai Village, Xuejiawan Town, has been overjoyed, carefully tending to more than a hundred piglets. Because pigs are in short supply this year, all the pigs on her farm that could be sold have already been sold out.
Zhang Fengying said that business at the pig farm has been getting better year after year, but when she first built the farm, she ran into quite a few difficulties. In 2004, after being laid off at the age of 30, she returned to the countryside and started raising pigs. She chose a site one kilometer from the village committee. At the beginning, she went into debt to raise pigs, and also ran into a sharp drop in pork prices.
"At the time, prices fell hard, but I had invested so much money - what was I supposed to do? There was no other way; I could only move forward, not back. I believe price rises and falls are cyclical. When there are lows, there will certainly be highs too."
And so, in the face of difficulty, Zhang Fengying confronted the challenge head-on, continuing to replenish her herd and expand her scale, until the pig farm's building area reached 3,500 sq m. If she did not know how to raise pigs, she taught herself, consulting professionals, buying a large number of books and materials, and personally observing the pigs' habits every day. Learning while practicing, after a period of exploration, she finally gained a certain amount of practical experience and knowledge about pig farming. How to feed pigs, how to breed them, how to farrow, and how to prevent and treat pig diseases - she tackled all these problems one by one.
After several years of hard work, Zhang Fengying's pig farm has now achieved considerable economic returns, growing from more than 100,000 yuan in debt when the farm was built in 2004 to more than 2 million yuan in fixed assets today. In the first three months of this year alone, she took in more than 600,000 yuan.
What is more, under Zhang Fengying's influence and leadership, a number of small and medium-sized specialized households have also emerged in surrounding villages and towns. Within a 5-kilometer radius there are 4 pig-farming households, all of whom built pig farms with Zhang Fengying's encouragement and help. According to the farmers, Zhang Fengying often takes the initiative to visit them to provide technical guidance and services, and has joined with pig farmers to introduce a batch of fine foreign breeds from Beijing, adopting the industry's most advanced technical equipment and management to expand the scale of pig farming, while also helping nearby villagers achieve stable employment.
Today, Zhang Fengying is not only a well-known major pig farmer in Zhungeer Banner, but also a people's representative of the autonomous region. Next, she wants to help her fellow villagers build more pig farms, forming a breeding industry, so that farmers can have more substantial incomes and more people can eat safe, reassuring pork.
"Poverty alleviation and reducing poverty, increasing farmers' incomes - industrial development is very important, and it can lead villagers to prosperity. Through so many years of entrepreneurial experience, pig farming has already become a profession for me. As long as you love doing this and persist in doing it well with all your heart, your efforts will definitely not be in vain. Because the more you put in, the more you get back." Zhang Fengying said.