Female PhD Travels Thousands of Miles Just to Study Earthworms

The photo above shows Fa Yueping introducing the situation at her earthworm breeding base; the photo below shows Fa Yueping displaying the earthworms she has bred (photographed on April 14).

Amid the bewilderment of her teachers, elders and friends, 46-year-old female PhD Fa Yueping resolutely gave up a high salary and the bustling life of a big city, and brought the red earthworms she had long admired from Nanjing, thousands of miles away, to "take root" in a rural village in Shandong Province.

Fa Yueping, who graduated with a bachelor's degree from the Department of Transportation Engineering at Southeast University in 1992, had always stayed in Nanjing to work, with a very considerable income. Later she entered Nanjing University for further study, obtained a doctorate in management in 2010, and taught courses related to engineering management.

At the end of 2014, she decisively resigned from her teaching job, brought her entrepreneurial team to Zhifang Village, transferred 100 mu of land, and introduced 10 tons of red earthworms from Northwest A&F University, beginning her rural entrepreneurial life.

At present, the land area Fa Yueping has "transferred" has increased to 400 mu. In addition to planting corn, she has also planted several rows of snow peach trees. Beneath the peach trees are rows upon rows of cow dung and straw piles for breeding earthworms. She is brewing an even bigger dream: to use vermicompost for organic production and earthworm bodies for biopharmaceuticals, so that a single earthworm can grow into a big industry, and to lead more and more farmers, especially impoverished households, to take part in earthworm breeding and processing.

Fa Yueping walks among several rows of snow peach trees. Beneath the peach trees are rows upon rows of cow dung and straw piles for breeding earthworms (photographed on April 14).

Fa Yueping (center) and two villagers from Zhifang Village discuss the use of vermicompost in a cornfield (photographed on April 14).

Fa Yueping digs out earthworms from a pile of cow dung and straw (photographed on April 14).