She Gave Up a Government Job to Become a Fruit Farmer, and Now Earns Tens of Millions of Yuan a Year
She gave up a stable government job and put her only 30,000 yuan in savings into an orchard. Later she founded Zhengzhou Xianke Ecological Agriculture Development Co., Ltd., built a well-known ecological leisure farm, and helped cultivate more than 10 large-scale fruit-growing households. She is Han Cuixia, a rural wealth-building expert.
Giving up a stable job and plunging headlong into the orchard
Han Cuixia is from Huayuankou Town, Huiji District. After graduating from university, she raised grasshoppers and foxes with her family, grew mushrooms, and finally found a stable job in the town government office. In 2012, when her brother was managing the orchard and preparing to give it up, she resolutely quit her government job and put her only 30,000 yuan in savings into the orchard.
By day she tended the fruit trees, and by night she looked up information on fruit tree management, and whenever she had a spare moment she went to the fruit tree research institute to consult experts. "Every day I was covered in mud, with dirt all over my face. When it rained, the yellow clay on the riverbank flats could pull my shoes right off. My face got tanned, my hands got rough, and when I greeted acquaintances on the street they could hardly recognize me." Recalling the hardships of starting out, Han Cuixia was full of emotion.
One day in the early winter of 2012, she and several workers were digging trenches in the orchard to apply fertilizer when the weather suddenly turned bad, so she told the workers to go home first. But later, while inspecting the orchard, she found that more than 30 m of the fertilizing trench still had not been filled with soil, and if it was not filled the fruit trees might freeze to death. "At that time I was the only one left in the orchard. I had no raincoat, so I threw an old piece of clothing over my shoulders, took a shovel and went to fill the soil. By the time I finished filling the trench, I had turned into a mud-covered figure. I got home aching all over, and my husband was both distressed and angry, and firmly refused to let me go to the orchard again, but my dream was there."
Building an agricultural ecological park and becoming a modern "manor owner"
In 2013, the orchard welcomed its first bumper harvest year. Han Cuixia had an even bigger ideal: "I want to build an agricultural ecological park and become a modern manor owner."
She acted as soon as she spoke. Han Cuixia founded Zhengzhou Xianke Ecological Agriculture Development Co., Ltd. and served as general manager, beginning the construction of the agricultural ecological park from a completely new perspective. By raising funds from relatives and friends, the park expanded to 600 mu, carried out overall planning, and created a three-dimensional planting and breeding circular model of fruit trees together with free-range insect-fed chickens, free-range pigs, free-rangegeeseand other livestock and poultry, with an annual fruit output of 380,000 jin and annual income from livestock and poultry breeding reaching 89.73 million yuan.
In order to help the local villagers get rich, she adopted the model of company + association + base to bring surrounding farmers into the effort. Every year she carefully organized training for the villagers, teaching them techniques hand by hand, and helped cultivate more than 10 large-scale fruit-growing households.