Grape-growing expert Liang Jufang leads villagers onto the road to prosperity

Liang Jufang is a resident of Xigengyu Group, Pancheng Subdistrict, Pukou District. In 2009, she raised 200,000 yuan, contracted 60 mu of land, and developed open-air grape cultivation. To learn grape-growing techniques, she traveled far and wide, subscribed at her own expense to "Fruit Tree Magazine" and agricultural science and technology newspapers, and copied out several notebooks of technical material on grape cultivation. When she ran into thorny problems, she also consulted agricultural technical experts by phone, and gradually worked out a set of key techniques for grape cultivation, fertilization, pest and disease control, and grafting, becoming a grape-growing expert known far and wide.

On the one hand, Liang Jufang passed on the techniques she had mastered to farmers without reservation; on the other hand, she helped farmers source and introduce new varieties and actively solved the practical difficulties they faced in production.

As grape yields rose, how to sell the grapes well and increase sales became another difficult problem for grape growers. To bring farmers real benefits, she worked through a family farm to cooperate with major supermarkets, adopted a guaranteed-minimum-purchase arrangement, coordinated supermarkets and grape growers in signing sales contracts, and carried out unified purchasing and unified packaging. She also took the annual Pancheng Grape Picking Festival as an opportunity to attract many city residents to pick grapes by hand in the vineyards; on her best day, she sold more than 20,000 yuan worth.