Black chickens sell for a high price of 598 yuan each, cooperative drives farmers to prosperity together

Tong Weixin built his success from nothing, and no one knows the taste of poverty better than he does. He taught himself and returned to his hometown to lead the villagers to prosperity together. Nowadays, a single chicken he raises sells for 598 yuan, which sounds like a tall tale, but Tong Weixin, born in 1988, made it happen.

The children of the poor take charge early

Born in Guozhiyuan Township, Jinzhai County (Anhui Province), Tong Weixin grew up in a poor family and only managed to survive with the help of the villagers. The hardships of his childhood made him resolve early on to change his life through hard work. After graduating from junior high school, to help support the family, he did not choose to continue his studies but went to the city to work. At a Japanese-owned enterprise in Suzhou, Tong Weixin worked steadily for 7 years. To be able to do the job well, he never stopped learning. In his spare time after busy work, he completed a correspondence course in Business Administration at Suzhou University of Science and Technology. In 2012, he passed the national adult college entrance examination and was admitted to Anhui Agricultural University. Over seven years, Tong Weixin grew step by step from a production line worker with zero experience into a technical backbone of the company, and from a teenager with no degree into a department supervisor.

Through continuous learning and striving, Tong Weixin not only improved his own life, but also broadened his thinking and vision. After long and careful planning and investigation, he finally decided to give up his stable job and good income and return to his hometown to start a business anew.

Leading the villagers to prosperity

"Getting rich alone doesn't count as being rich. I grew up eating food from many households, and my fellow villagers are still living hard lives. I want even more to help them prosper." In 2010, Tong Weixin formally resigned from all his work at the company and devoted himself wholeheartedly to the development of a new type of ecological agriculture.

Based on the geography and ecological environment of his hometown, as well as his own research on the agricultural product consumer market, Tong Weixin chose to raise an original ecological, high-quality specialty poultry breed aimed at the high-end consumer market, the "Jinzhai black chicken," and founded the Jinzhai County Jinlin Ecological Chicken Farming Professional Cooperative. However, developing a new type of ecological agriculture in a remote mountain village backward in both technology and capital was no easy task. To figure out the living habits of the Jinzhai black chicken, he read through a large amount of books and materials, and whenever he ran into a problem he hurried to consult experts from Anhui Agricultural University. To better observe the black chicken's habits, Tong Weixin even built a shack and lived on the mountain with the black chickens. On stormy, howling rainy nights, only a flashlight accompanied him as he patrolled the chicken shed; on snowy nights with biting north winds, a flashlight still accompanied him as he checked the chicken coop. After countless failures, Tong Weixin finally achieved initial success and worked out a unique ecological farming technique for black chickens.

Thanks to its unique taste and rich nutrition, the Jinzhai black chicken sells well in Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang and other places, and is favored by postpartum care centers in many places. Seeing the success of black chicken farming, the villagers either joined the cooperative or took chicks from the cooperative to raise free-range. According to statistics, through the cooperative's demonstration effect, more than 200 farming households in the surrounding area took part in ecological black chicken farming, increasing per capita annual income by 1500 yuan.

Going further with e-commerce

In 2012, the Anhui Agricultural Trade Fair opened in Shanghai, and specialty agricultural products became the focus. At the fair, Tong Weixin's "Mountain Spring Black Chicken" sold out on its first appearance, with one chicken selling for 598 yuan. On the second day of the fair he received an order worth 80,000 yuan. After returning from Shanghai, Tong Weixin found that his hometown's agricultural products were very popular in big cities, but the outside world knew little about these local specialties. The word "e-commerce" suddenly came to his mind. In 2013, together with some college students, he founded Three Farmers E-Commerce Co., Ltd., becoming the first person in Jinzhai County to venture into agricultural product e-commerce.

Between 2012 and 2014, Tong Weixin continued to increase investment, successively establishing the Shanghai Yerun Baifu Anhui Agricultural Products Direct Supply and Direct Sales Center and the Jinzhai County Three Farmers E-Commerce Co., Ltd., and building the "Three Farmers E-Commerce Platform." At the same time, he upgraded and renovated the cooperative, purchased various large-scale farming equipment, built dedicated hatching and breeding workshops, and created a large-scale ecological black chicken farming demonstration base in Jinzhai. Ultimately, a new agricultural product sales model of "production base + offline direct sales center + online e-commerce" took shape. In recent years, through this business model, Tong Weixin has achieved sales of ten million yuan, allowing consumers in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Shanghai and other places to gradually gain a deeper understanding of and choose agricultural products from Jinzhai and even the whole province, increasing the visibility of Anhui agricultural products. Tong Weixin told reporters: "Once you've set your direction, stride forward boldly. Don't worry about how many bumps lie ahead, just forge ahead."

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