College-graduate village officials in Hainan serve as good leaders in becoming wealthy and help farmers get rich
"Ever since the college-graduate 'village officials' came, our village's cherry tomatoes have been sold all over the country. In the first quarter of this year alone, I earned 100,000 yuan. I really wouldn't have dared to imagine this before!" said Lin Xianfei, a villager from Gangwei New Village, Guangpo Town, Lingshui Li Autonomous County, Hainan Province, happily.
The "village official" Lin Xianfei mentioned is named Lin Mingde, a native of Lingshui, Hainan. In 2010, after graduating from the College of Life Sciences at Hainan Normal University, he worked at the Hainan Dongzhaigang Mangrove Wetland Ecosystem Protection Station. However, having grown up in the countryside since childhood and watching his elders toil all day yet still struggle to live a prosperous life, he felt very anxious. In early 2014, he resigned from his stable job in the provincial capital and became a "village official" in Wenguan Village, Yelin Town, Lingshui County.
"After coming back, I just thought I must lead the villagers out of poverty and toward prosperity. Later, after talking with some nearby college-graduate 'village officials,' I found that everyone shared the same strong desire, so we started thinking about doing something together," Lin Mingde said.
Lingshui's cherry tomatoes are famous far and wide. The county plants about 60,000 mu of cherry tomatoes each year, making them a major local specialty agricultural product. However, in his conversations with farmers, Lin Mingde found that many villages and towns relied mostly on scattered household planting, lacked unified standardized management, and found it hard to create a brand effect. In addition, problems such as unequal market information and sales channels that mainly depended on "waiting" were also very prominent.
How could they lead farmers to leverage their resource advantages and get on the road to prosperity as quickly as possible? Half a year after becoming a "village official," Lin Mingde and several other "village officials" used 1 million yuan in startup funds they had raised to build the "Cunli Baba" online mall and information consultation website, and joined with more than 200 college-graduate "village official" members from Hainan on the platform to lead farmers in developing specialty planting and selling online.
"College-graduate 'village officials' live and work in rural areas for a long time, understand local conditions, and can conveniently guide farming households in scientific planting and breeding and integrate agricultural product resources. They can help farmers expand sales channels for agricultural products and also help distributors find high-quality sources of various agricultural products. 'Cunli Baba' plays exactly this kind of bridge role," Lin Mingde explained.
At the end of December 2015, Lin Mingde and several "village officials" from nearby villages led 28 farming households in planting 300 mu of cherry tomatoes. Through online and offline sales, they sold Gangwei New Village's cherry tomatoes all over the country, earning 3 million yuan so far and becoming true local "leaders in becoming wealthy."
"Although the weather last winter was bad and had a big impact on the growth of cherry tomatoes, with the unified management of the college-graduate 'village officials,' the quality of our cherry tomatoes was guaranteed. Add to that the good price of cherry tomatoes this year, and through timely online and offline sales, the income per mu actually increased quite a bit compared with previous years," said villager Lin Xianfei cheerfully. "Next year I plan to continue expanding the scale of cherry tomato planting."
This "Lingshui model" also inspired other college-graduate "village officials" on "Cunli Baba," and many "village officials" also led villagers onto the path of prosperity by combining with local specialty industries.
However, making a difference in rural areas is not easy. As a college-graduate "village official," Lin Mingde not only has to handle all kinds of complicated concrete affairs in the village, but also needs to put in more effort in guiding villagers toward standardized planting. Right now, the most headache-inducing issue for them is logistics.
"Because they 'collide' with seafood, our cherry tomatoes have recently been stuck at the airport several times and could not be shipped out, and in the end they all turned into 'tomato sauce,'" said college-graduate "village official" Huang Zhan helplessly. "Whenever this kind of problem occurs, we not only have to restock customers immediately, but also keep coordinating with the logistics side on follow-up matters such as compensation. It is really a headache."
"Next, we also plan to achieve precision production through crowdfunding, order-based production, big data analysis, and other methods," Lin Mingde said.