Scientific scorpion farming sets villagers of Dawuying Village, Lushan, Henan on the road to prosperity

"With the support of the Jinshengyuan Scorpion Farming Base, our village has great prospects for shaking off poverty and becoming prosperous." Recently, in the remote Dawuying Village, Zhangguanying Township, Lushan County, looking at the neat factory buildings built on the formerly barren earthen ridges, village Party branch secretary Qi Yongmin proudly told this writer.

Dawuying Village is located at the southwestern end of Zhangguanying Township, bordering Changcun Township of Ye County to the south. The transportation is convenient, but the area is mostly barren hills and hills, and the land is poor. In recent years, traditional grain production has hit a bottleneck, and the people have had only a single way to become prosperous, seriously affecting the village's development. Combining the geographical location, township and village officials turned passivity into initiative and coordinated through multiple channels, introducing Jinshengyuan scorpion farming in the second half of 2015.

According to Zhu Feng, head of Jinshengyuan Scorpion Farming, the base covers a total area of more than 155 mu. Construction started in the second half of 2015 and will be completed in three phases over five years, with a planned investment of 68 million yuan. The farming base has rich experience and complete technology in special breeding.

For a long time, disease and death among adult scorpions have been an important reason for the failure of many farmers in scorpion farming. The low birth rate of female scorpions and the death of female scorpions after giving birth are technical problems difficult for beginners to overcome. The low survival rate of baby scorpions, and the sudden death and escape of young scorpions, are also among the important reasons why scorpion farmers cannot increase output. After years of accumulated experience, the base has integrated the farming methods of major scorpion farms across the country and successfully developed a "fully ecological, imitating the wild" scorpion farming model, cleverly combining "temperature, humidity, and feed" organically, overcoming a series of problems that traditional scorpion farming could not overcome. Its business scope has expanded from single scorpion farming to selling dried scorpions, commercial scorpions, young scorpions, breeding scorpions, edible scorpions, scorpion-infused liquor, yellow mealworm farming, ground beetle farming, ground beetle processing, scorpion venom extraction, technical training, and more, with products sold throughout the country.

As of April this year, the base has completed an investment of 15 million yuan and built a large ecological venomous scorpion farming base of 50 mu, an 800-square-meter farming greenhouse, areas for ground beetle farming and yellow mealworm farming, 4 greenhouses of 200 sq m each, 6 production workshops, 12 living rooms, 6 office rooms, 1 scorpion farming room of 10,000 sq m, more than 5 million yuan invested in scorpion breeding stock, a 200-square-meter yellow mealworm farming workshop with more than 2,000 kg of yellow mealworms, and a 200-square-meter ground beetle farming workshop with 2,500 kg of ground beetles. A scorpion storage room of more than 1,200 sq m is under construction.

It is understood that the scorpion farming base adopts measures such as "unified supply of breeding stock, unified feeding and management, unified disease prevention and control, unified feed, and unified sales," and uses a "company plus farmers" model for standardized operation. At the same time, relying on the support of cooperatives and poverty alleviation associations, it provides free technical assistance and financial support to local poor households. At present, it has already led more than 20 poor households in surrounding villages to participate in scorpion farming and has provided work for more than 50 local idle laborers. After the project is fully put into production, it is expected to produce 10,000 kg of venomous scorpions annually, extract 2 kg of scorpion venom each year, and generate an annual output value of 10 million yuan, reaching seven surrounding administrative villages. Through industrial poverty alleviation, it will lead the people to shake off poverty and increase income, and embark on the road to prosperity.