Peng Ning Builds a Premium Vegetable Garden to Lead Fellow Villagers to Prosperity
Summer seasonal vegetables are gradually coming to market. To seize the market opportunity and sell at a good price, the Xinmao Ecological Agriculture Base in Tacheng Township, Nanchang County, is organizing farmers to rush-harvest leaf lettuce and calabash. Looking at baskets of freshly picked vegetables and fruits, everyone's faces are filled with joyful smiles.
"Land transfer brings income, and we can usually come to work at the base. Working with Boss Peng, we can get rich without leaving home." In the eyes of the villagers of Hubei Village, Tacheng Township, Peng Ning is a capable man in the village. He is deeply knowledgeable, yet he gave up a high-income job in the city and returned to his hometown to grow vegetables. Working in the fields, in just a few short years he has, through an ecological vegetable base, set more than a thousand villagers on the road to increased income and prosperity.
The story begins in 1983. That year, Peng Ning was admitted with outstanding grades to Hefei University of Technology to study powder metallurgy. At that time, a university student was the pride of the whole village. In 1987, after graduation, Peng Ning was assigned to work at China First Automobile Group Corporation. In 2006, he switched jobs to a listed company in the province. With a senior engineer title and an annual income of 200,000 yuan, Peng Ning was unwilling to hold on to his "golden rice bowl" and resolutely resigned to return to his hometown. Relatives and friends did not understand this move, but Peng Ning was firm in his heart: "Every year when I come home, my hometown has not changed much. I hope I can do something to make my hometown better."
Hubei Village is located in the central area of Shuilanzhou, Tacheng Township, with beautiful scenery. Peng Ning decided to rely on the ecological advantages here to carry out green planting and breeding.
In 2010, Peng Ning established the Xinmao Ecological Agriculture Base and transferred land to build a vegetable base. Although different trades are like different mountains, Peng Ning's knowledge and management experience allowed him to handle the new industry with ease. Through targeted study and inspections, Peng Ning quickly became an expert in vegetable cultivation. With crop rotation on one mu of land, annual returns could reach 30,000 yuan at most. When it came to operations and sales, Peng Ning was even more of a professional. Often working from dawn to dusk traveling among various markets and having a clear grasp of vegetable price trends, he was best at avoiding supply peak periods, identifying periods of vegetable demand, and selling at good prices. Peng Ning also registered the "Gandi Xinmao" trademark and built a pollution-free vegetable base. Fourteen vegetable products under the company obtained pollution-free agricultural product certification from the Agricultural Product Quality and Safety Center of the Ministry of Agriculture. In addition, the Xinmao Ecological Agriculture Base operates under the model of "company + core base + farmers' professional cooperative + farmers," and farmers can participate in the company's planting in various forms and share the fruits of development. In 2015, the base's agricultural product sales revenue reached more than 24 million yuan, directly and indirectly driving more than 1,500 local farming households into employment.
Today, the Xinmao Ecological Agriculture Base has transferred 1,006 mu of land, including more than 350 mu of pollution-free vegetable cultivation base, more than 100 mu of hundred-fruit orchard, more than 260 mu of aquatic ecological breeding farm, more than 60 mu of livestock and poultry ecological breeding farm, and more than 230 mu of rice and other cash crops. This year, Peng Ning increased investment in infrastructure and built multi-span greenhouses, preparing to focus on premium fruits and vegetables. Peng Ning said: "For premium fruits and vegetables, the main focus is asparagus, which has high value and large demand. I hope through it to further help villagers increase income and become prosperous."