How the Peach King Led the Whole Village to Prosper by Growing Peaches

"In the past two years the peach trees have grown well. Take a variety like Bai Feng - counting four years to fruit, one mu of land can produce 3000-4500 jin. Even selling at 10 yuan for 3 jin, you can earn at least 10,000 yuan." The speaker was Ma Yongbao, the well-known "Peach King" of Miaozhao Village, Miaozhuang Town, Ninghe District.

Ma Yongbao is a famous figure in Miaozhao Village. The land in Miaozhao Village is reclaimed saline-alkali soil from the sea, which is suitable for growing peach trees. The village therefore has a history of more than 40 years of peach cultivation, but today the most renowned person in the village is none other than Ma Yongbao. Through many years of hard work and experience, he has accumulated rich knowledge of peach growing. The peaches he grows are large, plump and sweet, and no one in the village can speak of Ma Yongbao without applauding him.

A single flower does not make spring; a hundred flowers in bloom fill the garden with spring. Ma Yongbao, who had grown rich by growing peaches, thought of the other villagers.

"In 2014, the state called for planting fruit trees and offered subsidies. The village Party secretary and the village head came to me to discuss setting up a cooperative to lead everyone to prosperity together, and their idea matched mine perfectly." Ma Yongbao recalled the early days of the cooperative.

On January 25, 2015, the Baole Fruit Planting Professional Cooperative was founded, led by Ma Yongbao with 49 households of villagers joining.

"At the time I had only one goal: to make the whole village prosper and to sell our peaches better and farther." Ma Yongbao said.

The cooperative adopted a model of "unified management + individual operation", giving play to both the advantages of the collective and the initiative of individuals. In 2015, under Ma Yongbao's guidance, villagers who joined the cooperative planted 38 peach trees per mu, each tree yielding 150-200 jin, with a market price of 5 yuan per jin, bringing extremely considerable income.

Seeing how briskly the cooperative was doing, the villagers who had initially taken a wait-and-see attitude could no longer sit still and one after another asked to join. But this put Ma Yongbao in a difficult position.

Village Party secretary Ma Yongle, on behalf of the villagers who wanted to join, went to Ma Yongbao, hoping to expand the cooperative and bring more villagers to prosperity. Ma Yongbao wanted nothing less, but what if next year's harvest was poor, or the peaches were hard to sell? He feared betraying everyone's trust.

Secretary Ma understood Ma Yongbao's worries, but they both knew they could not give up the chance for the whole village to prosper just because of difficulties. The two fretted a great deal over the matter. After much discussion, Ma Yongbao stopped hesitating and finally made up his mind to make the Baole Fruit Planting Professional Cooperative bigger and stronger.

Today, the number of farming households in the cooperative has reached 106, with a planting area of 1100 mu. Ma Yongbao is not only a local celebrity and a busy man, but also the capable person the peach growers trust most. He knows the planting situation of every household like the back of his hand, and whenever a family's peach trees have problems or a grower runs into a technical difficulty, their first reaction is to look for him. As long as they find Ma Yongbao, the problem is sure to be solved.

After more than a year of development, the cooperative has kept growing. Building on what already existed, Ma Yongbao has actively developed distinctive ecological agricultural products under the forest, which has become another new highlight of the village's development.