Before planting a hundred mu of peach trees, he had raised a thousand pigs
As he packed the nectarines into boxes, Wang Genxiang wore a smile on his face the whole time, a joy that came from the bottom of his heart. Three years earlier he had still been raising more than 1,000 head of live pigs, and he never would have imagined that one day he would give up the pig-farming business he had run for years to grow peaches, and that doing so would bring him a "second spring."
The Dragon Boat Festival mini-holiday is peak season for fruit sales, and for days on end Wang Genxiang, a villager of Jingxiang Village in Xinfeng Town, and his wife Gao Aizhu had been busier than they could handle, leading a crew of hired hands picking and packing nectarines and peaches in the orchard.
"A total of 102 mu of land, figuring an average return of 6,000 yuan per mu, comes to an estimated income of more than 600,000 yuan." When it came to peaches, Wang Genxiang had no end of things to say. "When they first hit the market in early May, nectarines sold wholesale for seven or eight yuan per jin, and peaches fetched even more. This is the first year the trees have borne fruit; next year the yield should double again..."
Just as the Wangs were congratulating themselves on making the right choice in switching crops, no one would have guessed that only three years earlier the couple had still been wavering over whether to tear down their pig sheds. "Raising pigs really isn't a long-term proposition; aside from polluting the environment, the risk is huge." Gao Aizhu clearly remembered that in 2013, the year live pig prices fell, her family lost more than 300,000 yuan in one blow, and the couple could neither eat nor sleep well.
"The government called on us to switch to other production, and we responded, but we had raised pigs for years. If we stopped, what else could we do?" The outspoken Gao Aizhu admitted that on the question of whether to demolish the pig sheds, the couple had found it truly hard to make up their minds at the time. But the warmth of the district, town and village officials soon moved them, and a series of preferential policies for switching production put their minds at ease.
When talk turned to the help from departments at every level and from town and village officials, this plain farming couple remembered every single instance: to help them choose which cash crop to grow, the town agricultural economic service center specially sent people to accompany them on field visits to Shanghai, Quzhou and other places; since they knew nothing about the techniques, the head of the district agricultural economic bureau's sericulture and forestry station and the town's agricultural technicians braved cold winds and scorching heat to come to their fields time and again, guiding them hand in hand; to improve quality, the relevant departments even helped them contact experts from the Yangtze Delta Region Institute of Tsinghua University, who came to their door to provide nutritional technical guidance... And the district and town preferential policies for switching production and changing occupations further eased the financial pressure on Wang Genxiang's family in building greenhouses.
Because the Wang family's peaches were grown with greenhouse technology, they avoided the pest period and needed no pesticides, and being an early-maturing variety, they sold extremely well as soon as they reached the market. These days, as other peaches begin to flood the market in large quantities, the Wang family's peaches are already at the tail end of the picking season. More importantly, thanks to the guidance of experts from the Yangtze Delta Region Institute, the Wang family's peaches were especially large and had a fine appearance, with a very crisp, fresh texture; the largest single peach weighed more than 350 grams. "Growing peaches is far less risky than raising pigs, and the environment has become better and more beautiful too. No matter how much I bathed before, there was always a stench on me, and going out in public was downright embarrassing!" Gao Aizhu told reporters with a laugh.
"Peaches this good, you should hurry and register your own brand, that way you can raise the added value even more." "The surroundings of the fruit base need tidying up too; next year you could set up pick-your-own and farm-stay projects..." The ideas from Shen Bugen, head of agricultural industrialization at the Yangtze Delta Region Institute of Tsinghua University in Zhejiang, and from Xinfeng Town officials had Wang Genxiang and his wife nodding again and again: "This year we didn't listen to the experts and couldn't bear to thin the fruit; next year we'll have to make up that lesson! There may be fewer peaches, but with better quality, won't the price go up?" "This year our eldest daughter opened a WeChat account to promote sales, and the results have been pretty good..." As they spoke, the cheerful laughter of the Wangs carried far into the distance.
Xinfeng Town leaders told reporters that there are many other examples of successful production switching like Wang Genxiang's in Xinfeng Town, and these success stories have stirred the entrepreneurial passion of even more villagers. At present, the town has 76 registered family farms of 100 mu or more, most of them engaged in growing fruits, vegetables, nursery stock and flowers, with some also offering sightseeing and pick-your-own; most of the farm owners switched over from pig farming.