Grape clusters effect unleashed by a vineyard in Hengfeng, Jiangxi
In the bright spring sunshine, in the thousand-mu vineyard of Caiwu Village, Cenyang Town, Hengfeng County, Jiangxi Province, steel-framed greenhouses covered with white plastic film stand row upon row, rising and falling like waves, with field paths crisscrossing and ditches interwoven on a spectacular scale. In the fields, grape growers are weeding, removing buds, and clearing ditches and channels, presenting a busy scene that makes people forget the change of seasons.
Lu Haifeng and Ye Yongping, two post-80s leaders of planting and breeding cooperatives at the demonstration park, introduced that their plantation covers an area of more than 1,200 mu, growing nearly 800 mu of grapes and 300 mu of sugar oranges, as well as dragon fruit, strawberries, cherries and other valuable fruits. Each mu can generate income of about 8,000 yuan, which not only brings them considerable profits but also provides employment for more than 300 rural laborers at their doorstep, driving fellow villagers to get rich together.
Lu Haifeng and Ye Yongping are migrant workers who returned home to start businesses. While working away from home, they learned fruit planting techniques. In March 2013, they returned to their hometown and registered and established the Yanchen Planting and Breeding Cooperative and the Yezi Planting and Breeding Cooperative. To encourage farmers to return home and start businesses, Cenyang Town established a modern ecological agriculture industry demonstration park in Caiwu. The park has now built an agricultural products distribution center covering more than 20 mu with a cold storage facility.
In order to create a favorable development environment for returning migrant workers, Cenyang Town actively helped cooperatives transfer land, solving the problem of contiguous land leasing for cooperatives; integrated comprehensive agricultural development and small-scale farmland water conservancy projects, improved agricultural infrastructure, helped entrepreneurs apply for small-sum guaranteed loans to support entrepreneurship, used funds from contiguous development industrialization poverty alleviation projects to support farmers in building steel-framed greenhouses and specialty planting, and helped returning farmers solve development funding difficulties. Incentive mechanisms were adopted, combining large-scale concentrated operations with dispersed household operations, strengthening industrial support, improving service functions, and expanding the scale of e-commerce sales. Through the demonstration and leadership of large-scale growers and the development of agritourism, the "blood-making" function of poverty alleviation was enhanced, driving more farmers to increase income and get rich.
With the support of town and village authorities at all levels, the vineyard built steel-framed greenhouses, using combined steel-framed greenhouses for insulation, and adopted organic formula fertilization, drip irrigation for water conservation, and pipeline spraying for pest control and other high-tech agricultural techniques for planting. More than 20 premium grape varieties were introduced and planted in the park, including Jufeng, Summer Black, Beauty Finger, Black Rose, Giant Rose, and Black Enchantress, bearing fruit in all four seasons, and through the "farmer-supermarket direct purchase" method, achieving fixed-point direct sales and brand sales of fresh fruit.
In order to better integrate the grape industry with new rural construction and tourism, allowing visitors to see beautiful scenery and eat fresh fruit, Cenyang Town, centering on the concept of "industry-village integration, resource intensification, and beautiful ecology," based itself on reality, adapted measures to local conditions, and took advantage of the tourism momentum to build Wangjia Village into a new-type characteristic tourism village integrating ecological sightseeing, agritourism, leisure vacations, and folk customs. "Flowers in all four seasons, fruit in all four seasons, joy in all four seasons" is a true portrayal of Wangjia New Village. The agricultural industry in the new village has grown and expanded, forming a 2,600-mu leisure agriculture ecological base currently dominated by grapes, cherries, sugar oranges, dragon fruit, and strawberries. Among them, the grape base serves as the flagship feature of Wangjia New Village. In 2014 and 2015, Cenyang Town held two consecutive Yanchen Grape Culture Tourism Festivals, attracting numerous tourists for sightseeing and picking, and the town's grape industry became widely known as a result. Nowadays, whenever the thousand-mu grapes ripen and the park opens in summer, sightseeing and picking tourists come in an endless stream, and the entire new village is as festive and lively as a holiday, with the grape sightseeing corridor bustling with people.
In conjunction with new rural construction, Cenyang Town rode the express train of the internet and established an e-commerce entrepreneurship park in Wangjia New Village, attracting more than 20 farming households and e-commerce makers, exploring a new development path of "internet plus agriculture." Grape sales achieved integrated online and offline personalized customization, and an rural e-post platform and a showroom for e-commerce enterprises to display specialty agricultural products were built for villagers. Through the "rural e-post" online platform, consumers can place orders online, growers can sell online, delivering ecological, green, and organic agricultural products to consumers and expanding the market.
"In the western garden after evening clearing, a delicate coolness floats; opening a cup, I casually pick grapes to taste. The full trellis holds up high purple nets and ropes; one branch slants down with golden tinkling ornaments." Through the industrial operation forms of "cooperative plus farmers," "sightseeing tourism plus agriculture," and "internet plus agriculture," the Caiwu Modern Ecological Agriculture Industry Demonstration Park in Cenyang Town successfully built a thousand-mu grape base, a thousand-mu vegetable base, a thousand-mu fruit industry base, and a thousand-mu seed production base, attracting more than ten returning entrepreneurs and also drawing two merchants from Jiangsu and Zhejiang to invest and start businesses. The modern agricultural industry development in the park is like clusters of grapes on a trellis, showing a "grape cluster-style" "agglomeration effect," driving farming households to get rich together and stride toward a moderately prosperous life.