Pei Junxue, founder of a melon and vegetable cooperative, leads farmers to prosperity
The name Pei Junxue is not very well known in Lanxi County, Suihua City, Heilongjiang Province, but mention Pei Laosan and plenty of people know who you mean. When people talk about Pei Laosan, the first things that come to mind are: founder of the Laosan Melon and Vegetable Cooperative, leader in science and technology, model of wealth creation……
Clarifying the approach and grasping development
Years ago, Pei Junxue was just an ordinary farmer. In 1990, unwilling to settle for mere subsistence, Pei Junxue chose to grow cash crops, and after years of arduous struggle he made his fortune. In 2002, Pei Junxue was elected secretary of the Party branch of Xinghe Village. In order to change the villagers' poor and backward situation, Pei Junxue drew on his own experience of getting rich and set his sights on high-value melon and vegetable cultivation. Pei Junxue first selected 5 representative poor households in the 5 natural villages of Xinghe Village, and supported them in growing watermelons. He provided the funds and the technology, and promised to bear the risk. A few months later, the watermelons hit the market, and each household's 15 mu of watermelons brought a net income of 27,000 yuan.
In 2008, Pei Junxue saw that small-scale, one-household operations had many disadvantages: high input costs, weak ability to withstand market risks, and unequal footing when negotiating with buyers. In order to better meet market demand and enable the villagers to earn greater returns, Pei Junxue took the lead in establishing the Laosan Melon and Vegetable Cooperative. In that first year, 260 farming households joined, with nearly 10,000 mu of land enrolled. Pei Junxue led a team south to connect with buyers and manufacturers and broaden the sales market. Today's Laosan Melon and Vegetable Cooperative cultivates more than 40,000 mu of melons and vegetables, reaching surrounding counties, cities and villages.
Wholeheartedly helping the people get rich
Pei Junxue said: “If I cared about money, I wouldn't have taken this secretary's post. What I want to see is all my fellow villagers getting rich. What my fellow villagers need is my responsibility, and that is where my value lies.”
Years of rural work experience made Pei Junxue realize that to speed up the pace of farmers getting rich, it was also necessary to make use of the countryside's abundant labor resources, especially women, to vigorously develop the breeding industry and increase farming households' income. Pei Junxue gave full play to the local breeding strengths of the Xingda Chicken Breeding Cooperative, the Wangfuyuan Pig Breeding Cooperative and the Dongjingzi cattle-raising specialized village, encouraging and supporting them to expand their breeding scale, improve breeding efficiency, and guiding them to help farming households develop livestock and poultry breeding. Up to now, the whole village has 150,000 broiler chickens on hand, 26,000 pigs on hand, and 2,800 beef cattle and yellow cattle on hand, with the village's total output value of livestock and poultry reaching more than 40 million yuan.
In 2014, under Pei Junxue's leadership, the village's two committees used the “Three Increases” initiative as an opportunity to further spread publicity and mobilize fully, achieving whole-village land transfer in two natural villages, with 8,700 mu of contiguous planted area, all under scaled operation, and the whole village's land transfer area reaching 15,000 mu.
Devoting heart and soul to doing practical things for the people
For Pei Junxue there are no holidays. In the slack farming season he becomes a regular visitor to departments such as the poverty alleviation office, the county agricultural development office, the land bureau and the civil affairs bureau, either seeking funds or applying for projects. Over several years he secured more than 10 million yuan in funds, built more than 30 km of roads for Xinghe Village, and the land consolidation project he applied for, worth more than 40 million yuan, has passed acceptance by the higher-level department.
Xinghe Village has become prosperous, and Pei Junxue then took doing practical things for the masses as a hard target to fulfill. Farmers' access to tap water and cable television has become universal, the village-to-village road connection rate has reached more than 98%, and every effort is being made to improve the village's appearance and create a good living environment for the villagers.
Whenever any villager has something big or small going on, Pei Junxue eagerly helps. Che Guifan, a farmer from Shenxiaopu Village, and Li Jun, a farmer from Gushanzi Village, were living in difficulty, and their housing posed serious safety hazards. Pei Junxue applied to the higher authorities for housing subsidies while advancing 60,000 yuan of his own money to rebuild new houses for these two households…… Examples like this of Pei Junxue are too numerous to count.
The gratifying changes in Xinghe Village make the ordinary people, whose pockets are gradually filling up, feel proud. In the hearts of the villagers, they are all deeply grateful to Pei Junxue for guiding them onto the path to prosperity.
Excerpted from Northeast Network