She spent all her savings to research mushrooms: a post-90s female village official leads villagers to prosperity

Yan Qingling, 25 years old this year, is a selected and assigned university-graduate village official. She uses the knowledge she learned and combines it with the local existing advantages to develop edible fungus cultivation and lead the villagers out of poverty toward prosperity.

When the reporter met Yan Qingling, she was explaining edible fungus cultivation techniques to the villagers. These past few days, she has been paying attention to the growth of the mushrooms every day, hoping this year's mushrooms can sell for a good price.

Yan Qingling, a university-graduate village official in Dukouyi Township, Xiajin County: "This greenhouse is newly built this year. We mainly grow the 'Shuangkang Heiyou' oyster mushroom variety. This variety has high yield, good taste, and is easy to grow, so it is very suitable for promotion to the villagers. And this year the villagers have also seen the benefits of this greenhouse. This year ten households plan to join us and continue to expand."

Yan Qingling is from the urban area of Dezhou. After graduating from university, she could have found a stable job in Dezhou's urban area, but she preferred to go to the grassroots level for training. In July 2014, after rounds of selection, she became a university-graduate village official. When she first arrived in Dukouyi Community, Yan Qingling found that local people had a habit of growing vegetables, but the scale was small, the technology was backward, and the plots were scattered. During a survey of the local farmers' market, she spotted a business opportunity.

Yan Qingling: "At that time I attended a farmers' entrepreneurship training and found that Xiajin supplies about 80% of the cottonseed hulls to the national edible fungus industry, but the local edible fungus industry is not very developed. After I came back and did a survey, I found that Dudong Village has very rich land resources, abundant water, and a relatively large surplus labor force, making it very suitable for developing the edible fungus industry."

No sooner said than done. During the day, Yan Qingling busied herself with village work; at night, she looked up information. She went deep into the fields, talked with the villagers again and again, and investigated the local climate, water conservancy, cultural conditions and other factors again and again. She found that Dudong Village had a certain foundation in greenhouse cultivation and was very suitable for developing the edible fungus industry. In October 2014, Yan Qingling, who had just gotten married, took out all 30,000 yuan of her savings and began her entrepreneurial plan. However, the road to entrepreneurship was not so smooth.

Yan Qingling: "In the early days of starting the business, I indeed encountered many difficulties. For example, when we first produced shiitake mushrooms in large batches, due to improper operation by our skilled workers, plus our negligence during sterilization, insufficient sterilization time and other reasons, our first batch of 20,000 shiitake mushrooms were all infected, with a loss of nearly 20,000 (yuan)."

Through continuous exploration, Yan Qingling gradually mastered cultivation techniques and passed on her experience and scientific and technological knowledge to everyone without reservation. At present, the 8,500 shiitake mushroom sticks and 10,000 oyster mushroom sticks cultivated at Yan Qingling's entrepreneurship base have matured one after another. Seeing the mushrooms blooming like flowers, Yan Qingling's heart was filled with the joy of harvest.

Yan Qingling: "As a university-graduate village official, doing this is not about how big I want to make it or how much money I want to earn, but about using this advantage to promote my techniques to the villagers, so that through the form of 'cooperative + company + farmers,' the villagers can build up the local edible fungus industry and bring real economic benefits to the villagers."