Fuping Golden Mushroom Cultivation Boosts Farmers' Income
The first time I met Professor Hou was at the local agriculture bureau in Fuping County, Baoding City. He looked nothing like the image people have of a professor in a laboratory, and more like a farmer born and raised in the countryside: dark skin, rough hands, simple clothes, and rubber shoes caked with mud, no different from the locals. Only the kindness in his smile and the wisdom in his words revealed the bearing of an intellectual.
It was this professor who did not look like a professor who stayed in Fuping for more than eight months, using his edible mushroom cultivation techniques to help a large number of farmers quickly escape poverty. Deep in the mountains, he became the person the local people respected most and felt closest to. Wherever he went, every call of "Professor Hou" or "Teacher Hou" carried the sincere trust and gratitude of the villagers.
Hou Guisen, a professor at Langfang Polytechnic Institute, devoted himself to edible mushroom research over nearly 40 years of teaching, using edible mushrooms to open the door to poverty alleviation for farmers. He is also an outstanding teacher of Hebei Province, a model worker of Langfang City, and an advanced worker of Hebei Province.
About himself, he had little to say, but when it came to edible mushrooms, he opened up. At the shiitake mushroom planting park in Longquanguan Township deep in the mountains, he knew every mushroom shed like the back of his hand, talking as he walked, patiently explaining the shiitake cultivation process, points to note, and technical challenges such as how to control mushroom output in a planned way. Even during interview breaks, he never forgot to give local farmers technical guidance. He reminded them of everything from what temperature and humidity to maintain to when to harvest, and only felt at ease once he had covered it all. He often said that this is the guarantee of people's livelihoods, and not a single detail can be neglected. Only when results are produced and people believe in them can they be helped out of poverty.
"We've never even eaten shiitake mushrooms. Can growing this stuff really work? What if it fails? You'll have to give us a written guarantee!" In August of last year, Hou Guisen arrived in Fuping County, and the planting plan he had spent countless days and nights researching was just about to be put into practice when it got off to a bad start. In Fuping County, where more than 50% of the population lived in poverty, the per capita annual income was less than 2,500 yuan, and in some villages the per capita annual income was less than 1,000 yuan. Asking farmers to invest money in cultivation was difficult beyond imagination. The farmers had no confidence, no one dared to try easily, and no one believed that these tiny mushrooms could lift them out of poverty and bring them wealth. Hou Guisen spent untold effort, earnestly and patiently doing ideological work bit by bit, carrying out mobilization and training for technology promotion. Gradually, the bolder farmers began to follow him. Now that the first batch of shiitake mushrooms has come in, the market price reaches as high as eight or nine yuan per jin, and a single shed yields more than 20,000 yuan in output value. Calculating on the basis of one household growing two mushroom sheds, a mushroom-growing household earns about fifty or sixty thousand yuan in a single season. With the involvement of leading enterprises in both early and later management, in addition to cultivation income, mushroom farmers can also earn a monthly salary income of 3,000 yuan. With no worry about sales and more income, the farmers' pockets are fuller and their doubts are gone.
"The harvest is so good, I can't describe how happy I am. Thanks to Professor Hou! Never mind the farmers, even as a township official of Longquanguan Township, I am especially grateful to him!" said Gu Xiaohui, deputy head of Longquanguan Township in Fuping County. At present, the township's edible mushroom sheds have grown to 125, and 75 impoverished households are all growing edible mushrooms. Looking out from the base, sheds covered with black shade nets are neatly arranged in the valley. That is the hot land Hou Guisen has fought for, and it is also the hope of the people to escape poverty and achieve prosperity.
When they first started growing edible mushrooms, the mushroom farmers encountered many difficulties with the complex cultivation methods, so Hou Guisen taught them hand by hand how to grow edible mushrooms, from how to arrange the mushroom sticks and how to add water, to how to thin the seedlings and when to harvest and cultivate the mushrooms, fearing that problems during the cultivation process would affect the next flush of mushrooms. Hard work pays off. As the first successfully grown batch of shiitake mushrooms reached the market, the farmers' pockets grew fuller and their hearts blossomed with joy. More and more farmers joined the ranks of edible mushroom cultivation and embarked on the road to poverty alleviation and prosperity.
At present, under the leadership of Professor Hou and other experts, Fuping County has established the Tianshengqiao Thousand-Mu Modern Edible Mushroom Industry Core Zone. This is a full-industry-chain core zone integrating a modern edible mushroom technology introduction, research and development display area, a demonstration area for efficient cultivation using advanced facilities and equipment, a deep-processing industrial area for high-quality products, and a model area for driving the masses to increase income and become prosperous. The core zone is currently under intense construction. Once completed, it can produce 100,000 mushroom sticks per day and 20 million mushroom sticks per year, which can guarantee the cultivation needs of 400 surrounding mushroom-farming households. In the future, the core zone can also provide nearly 1,000 jobs, opening yet another new path for Fuping County farmers to escape poverty and achieve prosperity.
Fuping County's edible mushroom cultivation has produced obvious results in poverty alleviation, and Hou Guisen has new ideas in mind. "There are many impoverished counties along the Taihang Mountains. In the future, we want to build an industrial belt, upgrade and renovate those old mushroom-growing areas, open up more impoverished areas suitable for developing edible mushrooms, and use a model of cultivating leading enterprises and cooperating with the government for joint promotion to achieve targeted poverty alleviation, so that Hebei Province's agricultural industrial structure adjustment can rise to another level." Hou Guisen said that his greatest wish is to introduce the latest technologies and cultivation models to all the impoverished areas in Hebei Province that can develop the edible mushroom cultivation industry, helping more farmers escape poverty and achieve prosperity.