Liu Huiyun realizes her dream of prosperity through green farming
Liu Huiyun is an ordinary rural woman from Fanjiayan Village, Chakou Township. She speaks her mind plainly, and her every gesture reveals the plainness and kindness unique to a farmer; she is not content with an ordinary life, and a dream has long been growing in her heart: she wants, through her own efforts, to build a career of her own and let both herself and the villagers live better lives. Over the past 7 years, she has tirelessly explored the path of entrepreneurship, and together with her fellow villagers, she has embarked on a road of green agriculture, entrepreneurship, and prosperity.
At first, Liu Huiyun simply loved watching "Roads to Wealth" on Shanxi TV. By a chance encounter, she saw a program introducing the wealth-building experience and innovative practices of free-range chicken farming, and her heart was stirred; she felt it was time to put her dream into practice. So she went to chicken farms in Ningjin, Zanhuang, and Pingshan in Hebei for on-site inspections, and in 2009 she returned to the village and opened a laying hen farm. But because transport in the village was inconvenient and water sources were scarce, raising chickens on the mountain had high costs and low profits, so in 2011 Liu Huiyun reluctantly sold all of the more than 5,000 laying hens she had raised. Although the loss this time was not small, Liu Huiyun's entrepreneurial dream did not stop there.
In March 2011, taking the opportunity of developing the county into a major agricultural county, Liu Huiyun raised 20,000 in funds and, together with villagers, founded the Huiyun Planting Professional Cooperative, serving as its director. The cooperative takes the cultivation of minor grains such as millet, corn, sorghum, and beans as its main industry. In accordance with the requirements of new rural construction and modern agricultural development, it gives full play to its industrial characteristics and regional advantages, adopts the "cooperative + base + farming households" model, and develops high-value-added green ecological agriculture. In order to improve the efficiency of cultivated land, while selecting new varieties and new technologies, Liu Huiyun also personally went to the county agricultural committee to learn how to purchase high-quality seeds, went to the county agricultural machinery center to learn how to purchase fertilizer, and invited agricultural experts and technicians to teach hands-on in the fields. Through land transfer, she centralized the management of the village's land, and in light of the actual geographical conditions, she actively guided cooperative members to establish scientific planting concepts and make rational use of cultivated land, doing everything possible to extract gold from the soil, raising the average annual net income per mu of cultivated land by 1 times, to more than 1,000 yuan. Seeing the cooperative's returns getting better and better, Liu Huiyun struck while the iron was hot and registered the "Jin Huiyuan" trademark in 2013, and invested 30,000 yuan to purchase vacuum machines, sealing machines, and other equipment to process, classify, and package agricultural products for sale throughout the city, achieving "integration of production and sales," and the cooperative's income increased year by year.
Up to now, the cooperative's registered capital has reached 500,000 yuan. The number of farming households joining the cooperative has grown from the initial 5 to more than 90 today, the number of members has increased from 30 to 200, the cultivated land area has increased from 50 mu to more than 400 mu, the total grain output has reached 235,000 kg, and annual income has reached more than 400,000 yuan.
Today the Huiyun Planting Professional Cooperative is doing booming business, and only Liu Huiyun and her partners know the hardships involved. In 2014, to improve cultivated land efficiency, Liu Huiyun purchased 2 rotary tillers. Because most of the village's cultivated land is terraced and the ground is uneven, both machines accidentally tipped into ditches while working the land. Watching the brand-new machines overturn into the ditches, Liu Huiyun felt both distressed and anxious, and had no choice but to buy 3 more rotary tillers from elsewhere to continue the work. In places the machines could not reach, they could only carry hoes on their shoulders and dig bit by bit by hand. "If you're not in the countryside, you simply won't understand the hardships of farmers," Liu Huiyun said meaningfully.
It is precisely this spirit of being able to endure hardship and daring to strive that led the Provincial Department of Agriculture to award the Huiyun Planting Professional Cooperative the title of "Provincial-Level Demonstration Cooperative" in 2014, and the municipal government to award it the title of "Advanced Unit"; in 2015 Liu Huiyun was awarded the titles of "Pingding County Top Ten Rural Women Leaders in Science Popularization" and "Top Ten Science Popularization Demonstration Large-Scale Planting Households" by the county science and technology association; in March 2016 she was awarded the title of "Women Entrepreneurship Star" by the county women's federation and the honorary title of "March 8th Red Banner Pacesetter" by the municipal party committee.
This year, the cooperative plans to invest in building a rice milling plant, and in 2017 it also plans to repair the field roads within the cooperative's operating area. "After the rice milling plant is built, the villagers won't have to walk so far to mill rice anymore." That is just how Liu Huiyun is: on the road of entrepreneurship and prosperity, she never forgets to seek benefits for the villagers. In 2014, when Liu Huiyun went to the municipal party committee for an awards meeting, she accidentally learned that the municipal party committee had a benefit-the-people policy of "sending opera to the countryside," so she went to the municipal government and secured an opera performance for the village, fulfilling the villagers' wish to watch a grand opera at their doorstep. In addition, during the period when she raised chickens, Liu Huiyun distributed 5 jin of eggs per person per month to villagers over 70 years old. During the period of developing green agriculture, she gave appropriate subsidies for transferred land, provided millet seeds, compound fertilizer, and pesticides free of charge, and also subsidized fertilizer. "The cooperative is developing very well now, and the members all support my work very much. I only hope to use my meager strength to help more people who need help," Liu Huiyun said.
No pains, no gains. With her hard sweat, Liu Huiyun has watered every piece of land the cooperative operates and led the villagers out of a road of prosperity through green agriculture; with her spirit of daring to think and act and of enduring hardship, she writes the extraordinary entrepreneurial journey of an ordinary farmer.