Circular agriculture industry chain brings a good harvest
From sand willow to rex rabbit, from ecological chain to biological chain, from product chain to industry chain, Dongda Mongolia King Group has built a fully coupled industrial cycle for "targeted poverty alleviation through the sand industry", attracting farmers and herders from 12 provinces and regions across the country to come here to start businesses and develop, achieving poverty alleviation and prosperity.
Standing at Fengshuiliang on the eastern edge of the Kubuqi Desert in Inner Mongolia and gazing into the distance, the contiguous rex rabbit breeding base has already begun its twelfth phase. Breeding courtyards with blue roofs and red roofs, green willows and yellow poplars planted along the way. Here, 3,554 breeding households, nearly 10,000 people, from 12 provinces and regions across the country have bid farewell to poverty.
Ecological construction adds greenery to the hometown
Advancing into the desert, Dongda Mongolia King Group started with a single frail sand willow.
Ordos City in Inner Mongolia has an area of 87,000 sq km, with the Mu Us Sandy Land and the Kubuqi Desert stretching across from north to south, occupying 48% of its area. And over the years, artificial reckless reclamation and deforestation have made the already fragile ecological environment even worse.
Sand willow is a high-quality tree species for local windbreak and sand fixation, with the characteristics of drought tolerance and easy growth. Once, the Ordos region had 435,000 hectares of sand willow forest, with an annual harvest of 550,000 tons of sand willow. Apart from the 130,000 hectares already developed and utilized and the 64,000 hectares not yet forested, the rest had not been effectively developed and utilized. In the past, local people only used sand willow as firewood, with a low utilization rate and no enthusiasm for planting and tending it, causing large areas of sand willow to die naturally. The biological characteristic of sand willow is that coppicing once every 3 to 5 years is best, and after coppicing the sand willow grows at 8 times the speed. 20% of the leaves and tender branches of sand willow, mixed with crop straw, alfalfa and other herbaceous plants, can be made into feed for breeding, and 80% of the branches can be processed into wood pulp for papermaking and sand willow particleboard.
Starting in 1998, Dongda Mongolia King Group invested more than 80 million yuan successively to develop and build a 300,000-mu sand willow planting base in Fuquanyuan, Zhonghexi Township and Yonglongquan. Adopting the "company + farmers" model, with a total investment of 405 million yuan, it established 32 comprehensive sand willow management areas in the Kubuqi Desert and more than 50 pen-fed cashmere goat breeding bases, driving the planting of nearly 3 million mu of sand willow, and about 10 million mu of surrounding desert and sandy land have been treated to varying degrees.
Fengshuiliang, the original residence area of ecological migrants and the "second hometown" of migrant workers, has turned green year by year.
Working together brings family reunions
Dongda Group adopts the "enterprise + base + farmers" model, providing breeding households free of charge with a set of housing, biogas equipment and other facilities to develop the rex rabbit breeding industry. Breeding households only need to invest 20,000-30,000 yuan to buy breeding rabbits and rabbit cages, and then they can engage in rex rabbit breeding. To support the development of breeding households, the enterprise has successively invested more than 3 billion yuan in subsidies, providing five-guarantee services of guaranteed facilities, guaranteed breeding rabbits, guaranteed feed, guaranteed epidemic prevention and guaranteed sales, and implementing the six-wheel drive of "large-scale breeding, industrial supporting facilities, specialized management, systematic division, modern processing and capitalized operation", attracting farmers and herders from the revolutionary old area of the Dabie Mountains in Henan, impoverished areas of Gansu, as well as Heilongjiang, Jilin, Zhejiang, Sichuan and other 12 provinces across the country to come here to start businesses, develop, escape poverty and become prosperous.
"Engaging in rex rabbit breeding with farmer households as units, and tailoring the 'leave the land but not farming' production method for poor households, is a kind of targeted poverty alleviation." Wang Jinyong, former director of the Policy Research Office of Ordos City, told reporters, "At present, in the Fengshuiliang park, we have built breeding courtyards and also provided kindergartens, primary schools and so on, solving the problems of rural left-behind women and left-behind children caused by workers going out alone, so that they can bring their children to work here together."
Xu Suoxiao, a villager from Yandian Village, Bainijing Town, Dalad Banner, Inner Mongolia, before moving to Fengshuiliang, farmed, raised sheep and sold sand willow. He seemed to have a lot of work, but his income was very little, and life got worse day by day, with more and more debt. In 2008, Xu Suoxiao's family moved to Fengshuiliang. His wife Wu Enu specialized in breeding rex rabbits, while Xu Suoxiao worked nearby, and the family's annual income was nearly 100,000 yuan. Now, Xu Suoxiao and Wu Enu have bought a relocation building and are just waiting to decorate and move in.
At the organic pasture in the Fengshuiliang park, cattle feeder Dong Yufeng told reporters that his hometown is in Qingyang, Gansu. Previously, he busied himself for a whole year and just had enough to eat, but now, besides food, he also has a "salary" of 1,500 yuan per month. "My wife also has an income, and we old couple can still be together when we go out, which really makes us happy." Dong Yufeng said, "My wife went home to bring our little grandson here to attend kindergarten."
Circular economy helps family assets increase in value
From ecological chain to biological chain, from product chain to industry chain, Dongda Mongolia King Group has built a fully coupled industrial cycle for "targeted poverty alleviation through the sand industry".
"We have created two major circular industry chains in Fengshuiliang, one is the ecological industry chain, and the other is the biological industry chain." Speaking of Fengshuiliang, Zhao Yongliang, chairman of Dongda Mongolia King Group, talks about it with great familiarity: "The ecological chain has pulled out two chains. One is the planting industry chain, which is sand willow planting and extending to particleboard production; the other is the organic product chain, which is greenhouse picking and tourism sightseeing, while also using particleboard scraps to grow wood-rotting fungi to produce organic shiitake mushrooms. The biological chain has also pulled out two chains. One is the breeding chain, which is rex rabbit and special breeding. The scraps from rex rabbits are used to raise mink, the scraps from mink are used to raise foxes, the scraps from foxes are used to raise raccoon dogs, the scraps from raccoon dogs are used to raise wolves, and the scraps from wolves are turned into medicinal materials, while the roofs of the breeding sheds are used for photovoltaic power generation; the other is the biological product chain, which is using the fur of rex rabbits and animals to produce clothing, using rex rabbit meat to produce organic sausages and various meat products, using blood and internal organs for biopharmaceuticals, and using rabbit manure to grow straw-rotting fungi to produce button mushrooms. Finally, the organic fertilizer produced by the two common chains transformed the desert, forming an industrial pattern of virtuous cycle and efficient utilization."
Linked ring by ring, this has brought household assets of poverty-alleviated households higher step by step. In March 2013, Sun Lanzhen from Zhejiang Province came to Fengshuiliang and began rex rabbit breeding with the mindset of giving it a try. In just 3 years, starting from the initial one building with two sheds and 240 breeding rabbits, she developed to the current 11 buildings with 22 sheds and more than 9,000 breeding rabbits, with total income reaching more than 500,000 yuan, becoming a star breeding household in Fengshuiliang.