Giving Up a High Salary to Raise Pigs, Finding the Road to Wealth Through Online Promotion
Original headline: Quitting a White-Collar Job to Become a Pig Farmer, This College Student Struck It Rich
Li Penglong at his family's farm
Recently, at the Zanjia Farm in Quchaihe Town, Panshi City, the reporter met a tall, slender, simple and honest young man with a shy smile. Through conversation, the reporter learned that his name is Li Penglong, 28 years old, and he is the person in charge of the farm. Only after asking in detail did the reporter learn that he is not only a genuine college graduate, but also a well-known entrepreneurial expert in the local area.
Giving Up a High-Paying Job to Return Home and Start a Pig Farm
In 2008, Li Penglong was admitted with excellent grades to the Automobile Inspection and Maintenance program at Changchun Vocational and Technical School. After graduating, he smoothly entered Changchun First Automobile Factory, earning a monthly salary of more than 7,000 yuan. For a college student who had just graduated, this was a job that many people envied. But Li Penglong was not satisfied with this stable and comfortable life. His daring and enterprising character sparked the idea of starting his own business.
In July 2011, Li Penglong heard that the state had introduced policies encouraging college students to return home and start businesses. Considering his hometown's suitable climate conditions and rich resources, he resolutely resigned from his high-paying white-collar job and decided to return home to carve out a world of his own.
Li Penglong's father had been engaged in pig farming for many years, but the traditional farming model and outdated business philosophy had restricted the scale of the operation. After investigating many options, Li Penglong decided to expand the farm and adopt a pollution-free pig farming model combining "free-range plus pen-raising" to produce "green" pork.
Consulting materials, inviting livestock experts for on-site inspection and feasibility studies, raising funds, personally participating in construction... Through Li Penglong's hard work, a farming base covering 1.9 sq m... wait, 19,000 sq m of land was officially put into use. At the beginning of his business, he experimentally raised 20 sows, feeding them carefully and tending to them attentively. However, due to a lack of technology and experience, the piglet mortality rate was extremely high, and sometimes sows also died from difficult births, bringing him economic losses of more than 200,000 yuan. Through this experience, he realized that technology was crucial. Li Penglong went to neighboring towns to learn pig farming techniques, invited experts to the farm for technical guidance, used the internet to consult literature and materials, and learned from local farmers about breeding methods for breeding pigs, feed ratio techniques, disease prevention measures and other farming experience. Through learning, he quickly mastered mature pig farming techniques.
In 2013, Li Penglong's pigs were ready for market. After tasting them, nearby villagers all praised his pork for its rosy color, smooth texture and delicious taste. For a time, his pigs were in short supply, and sales revenue reached 200,000 yuan, giving him even more confidence.
Using Online Promotion
Building a Modern Business Model
After gaining successful experience, Li Penglong became increasingly bold. He improved the hardware facilities of the farming base, increased investment in health care and epidemic prevention, and introduced excellent breeding pig varieties from other places. Today, his farming base has gotten on track. The number of sows has grown from the original 20 to the current 100, the inventory has reached more than 700, and about 2,000 pigs can be marketed each year, with annual sales revenue reaching nearly 4 million yuan.
A boat sailing against the current must forge ahead or it will be driven back. Although Li Penglong's farming business has already achieved success, he has never stopped moving forward. In order to adapt to the pace of development in the internet era, he uses websites, WeChat and other online media to publish his farming information, rapidly expand his visibility, and promote his successful farming model so that more surrounding farmers can learn about it and join in.
Through exchanges with other farmers, Li Penglong found that everyone generally faced problems such as a lack of technology, a lack of market information and a lack of new ideas. "If a cooperative is established, through a model of unified breeding pig supply, unified technical services, unified disease and epidemic prevention, unified feed procurement and unified pig sales, absorbing surrounding villagers to achieve large-scale farming, it can reduce costs and enhance the ability to resist risks." Li Penglong wants to use local resource advantages to continue expanding the scale of the farm, establish branch farms, and build a modern business model of "company + base + farmers." By establishing a large professional cooperative and creating a brand, he will drive more surrounding farmers and rural households to form large-scale farming operations and achieve common prosperity. (W reporter Zhang Xue, correspondent Wang He, text/photo)