Wild Boar Farming Helps Alleviate Poverty: Corporate Executive Gives Up High Salary to Return Home and Help Villagers Get Rich

Shang Wang of Xingshenggong Village, Huaishuo Town, Guyang County, Baotou City, is a well-known "pig commander" in the Guyang area. Back then, he gave up a corporate executive position with an annual salary of 300,000 yuan, resolutely resigned, and returned to his hometown to set up a breeding farm. Shang Wang said his dream was to return to the village to help his fellow villagers escape poverty and get rich, and to change the backward appearance of his hometown.

His company has successively received honorary titles such as "Baotou City Contract-Honoring and Trustworthy Unit," "Key Leading Enterprise in Agricultural and Livestock Industrialization," "Outstanding Characteristic Breeding Park," "Outstanding Migrant Worker Return-to-Hometown Entrepreneurship Park of the Autonomous Region," and "National Science and Technology Demonstration Park." Shang Wang himself has also been awarded the honorary titles of "National Outstanding Migrant Worker" and "National Model Worker."

A Flower Seed of a Dream in His Heart

In just a few short years, Shang Wang's Hanong Farm Wild Boar Breeding Park has accumulated an investment of nearly 6 million yuan. The main park covers about 800 mu and can accommodate 500 wild boars, with an annual cyclical production capacity of 5,000-10,000 wild boars, and it has successfully driven a group of farmers to raise wild boars.

In 1993, after being discharged from the military, Shang Wang went to Guangzhou to work. By 2006, at the age of 35, he was already able to earn an annual salary of 300,000 yuan. Seeing the developed township enterprises and the prosperous lives of farmers in the south, Shang Wang thought of his own hometown. In the spring of 2006, he went to Yunnan on a business trip and unexpectedly discovered a new pig breed. After that, he paid attention everywhere, using the spare time on each business trip to investigate wild boar breeding and market conditions in different areas elsewhere. A year later, carrying a dream buried in his heart for more than 20 years, Shang Wang gave up that high-paying job and returned to his old home to start raising wild boars through his own wisdom and hard work. But this was opposed by his whole family. His family said, "You earn such a high monthly salary in the south, and your life is already so good. Why throw the money you've earned into this poor mountain village?" Even though his family disapproved, he steeled himself and was determined to make wild boar farming succeed.

In 2007, Guyang County began banning grazing across the county, and Shang Wang was determined to seize this opportunity. He presented his idea to the leaders of Huaishuo Town and received strong support from the town Party committee and government. Just like that, he invested 300,000 yuan for the first time to start building pig pens, buying piglets, and preparing to establish Guyang County's first wild boar breeding farm.

In order to better master breeding experience and techniques, he bought various books and materials on scientifically raising wild boars, consulted local veterinarians and experts from agriculture and livestock departments, and studied hard on his own, gradually acquiring the ability to raise wild boars. When the wild boar sows gave birth, Shang Wang would go to the pig pens more than a dozen times every night to check. When tired, it was common for him to collapse onto a wooden chair and sleep. As his wild boar breeding business grew bigger and stronger, Shang Wang also added large, excellent purebred boars for mating and purchased large numbers of excellent purebred wild boar piglets... and the scale of wild boar breeding continued to expand.

Sprouting Strongly Without Fear of Wind and Rain

But just when Shang Wang was preparing to go all out, something he never expected happened, and for a time it made him want to give up the idea of raising wild boars.

In 2008, Shang Wang's parents passed away one after another, and problems also appeared at the wild boar farm. Because at the beginning he had not considered that temperatures could change suddenly and had not prepared warm pens for the wild boars in advance, large numbers of wild boars died in winter. During the period when his parents were seeing doctors and hospitalized, he also spent more than 500,000 yuan of his savings. At that point, not to mention buying wild boar piglets, he did not even have the money to buy charcoal to keep the pigs warm. That was the coldest winter of his life. After the leaders of Guyang County and Huaishuo Town learned of the situation, they came many times to visit and comfort Shang Wang. They repeatedly encouraged him to keep raising wild boars and gave him 20,000 yuan in Party member assistance funds.

Facing the swirling heavy snow outside, Shang Wang's frozen heart began to slowly warm up. He then used the 20,000 yuan in assistance funds to buy 20 tons of coal to keep the wild boars warm, and only then were the remaining more than 100 wild boars saved from freezing to death. Shang Wang said that this 20,000 yuan was truly timely help, a life-saving sum given to him by the Party organization, and along with the help from his fellow villagers, it was what made his success today possible. In this way, he made up his mind not only not to give up breeding, but to make it bigger and stronger, to repay the people who cared about him.

The Flower of Dreams Blooms Here

Now, when people walk into Shang Wang's Hanong Farm Wild Boar Breeding Park, from far away they can hear the loud singing played through loudspeakers in the wild boar pens. This is the music-listening feeding method he adopted for the wild boars. In the feed processing workshop, large feed processing machines rumble, and workers are busy, some processing feed, some mixing special wild boar feed, and some installing household-style colored radiators... Each wild boar lives very "comfortably."

Shang Wang has successively completed the infrastructure construction of the wild boar breeding base, the large-scale production of wild boars, and has streamlined and expanded sales channels, gradually embarking on a stable development path of scientific breeding, ecological domestication, and green environmental protection. The breeding park has now accumulated an investment of nearly 6 million yuan. In 2011 alone, more than 1,500 special wild boars were sold, achieving a profit of more than 1.4 million yuan. At present, this wild boar breeding park covers about 800 mu and can accommodate 500 wild boars, with an annual cyclical production capacity of 5,000-10,000 wild boars.

What is even more encouraging is that Shang Wang has now successfully driven more than 150 farming households around his hometown to raise wild boars. In order to expand sales, in 2009 Shang Wang sold wild boar meat to several hotels in Guyang and Baotou, earning a net profit of 200,000 yuan in one transaction. Media outlets including central, autonomous region, and municipal ones all reported on it one after another, making Shang Wang's wild boar meat even more in short supply. Under Shang Wang's influence, more and more farming households followed him in raising wild boars. He wants to drive his fellow villagers to raise wild boars like him and make money to prosper. For villagers farther away who raise wild boars but have no experience and do not understand the techniques, Shang Wang provides technical training free of charge at the breeding park and regularly goes deep into the homes of breeders for on-site guidance. For farmers and herdsmen who have the conditions for breeding and pass the training, piglets are given priority for seasonal trial breeding.

Through years of effort, the breeding park now has a group of breeding wild boars including Yunnan wild boars, southern Shaanxi wild boars, Changbai Mountain wild boars, and Sichuan wild boars. They implement a "company + park + farming households" production and operation model, sign wild boar contract-breeding and buyback contracts with breeders, and clarify the basic buyback price. Through market research, they take into account both high-end consumption and star-rated catering hotels, while also accommodating low-end consumers, stabilizing market prices. With this good model, the breeding scale of the park has grown larger and larger. In addition, with scientific wild boar feeding formulas, the quality of wild boar meat is also well guaranteed, and the economic benefits for breeders have continued to improve. Now, Shang Wang's breeding park has become the wild boar domestication and breeding base park with the most complete varieties, the highest pedigree, and the largest scale in western Inner Mongolia.

Good news came again in 2015. Shang Wang was preparing to attract several major projects from the south to settle in Baotou Jinshan Industrial Park. If successful, these projects could invest 1.4 billion yuan here, and this time alone could provide more than 2,000 jobs for migrant workers in the cities.