Zhaodong mushrooms tap deep into farmers' income-boosting potential during the winter slack season

Just after the Spring Festival, walking into the edible mushroom planting base in Shijian Village, Zhaodong Town, Zhaodong City, villager Guo Zhiying was picking oyster mushrooms in her own 400-sq-m greenhouse. The fresh fragrance unique to fungi greeted the nose, and then rows of mushroom sticks came into view, neatly arranged, with mushrooms vying to raise their stems and spread their caps, a scene of abundant harvest.

"The three or four hundred jin of oyster mushrooms picked now will be sold to the Harbin Antarctic Market. Fungi are natural green food, and there is no worry about market sales. The profit from one bag of mushrooms is about three or four yuan." As she spoke, Guo Zhiying's fingers moved lightly, removing excess mycelium roots from outside the mushroom bags, carefully tending the "fortune umbrellas" that raise her standard of living, linking together an industrial chain from edible mushroom introduction, selection, breeding and cultivation to sales. It is understood that Guo Zhiying began building greenhouses and a greenhouse shed in 2003, developing from the initial 1 earthen greenhouse to the current 5 greenhouses, 1 greenhouse shed and 1 workshop, and from an initial total area of 400 sq m to more than 2,000 sq m now. While ensuring product output and quality, she provides consumers with safer, greener and healthier edible mushroom products. "Our village has more people and less land, and the income from planting one mu of land is only a few hundred yuan. Through the edible mushroom planting training class 'matchmade' by the women's federation, I planted 45,000 bags of oyster mushrooms and 10,000 bags of nameko mushrooms last year. The greenhouse can produce 20,000 kg of oyster mushrooms a year, with an income of more than 50,000 yuan. Besides, growing mushrooms now means growing 'tech mushrooms'; mixing materials, sprinkling water, spraying medicine and keeping warm are all managed with scientific techniques." When talking about growing mushrooms, Guo Zhiying spoke with great fluency.

And the Yikang Edible Mushroom Planting Professional Cooperative in Zhaodong Town, through models such as unified purchase of raw materials, unified technical guidance, unified supply of mushroom spawn, unified production equipment, unified cultivation and production, household-based fine management and unified brand sales, has driven more than 100 women to abandon "each fighting alone" solo work and form a "group army" capable of fighting well by giving full play to each family's strengths, cultivating varieties such as oyster mushrooms, nameko mushrooms and petite mushrooms, with an annual output of about 4 million bags and a per capita annual income increase of more than 20,000 yuan. At the same time, the cooperative has also introduced more than a dozen varieties such as flower shiitake, elm yellow mushroom and enoki mushroom for trial planting. Members are continuously increasing new varieties, expanding cultivation area and improving product quality to achieve greater efficiency and income.

In recent years, Zhaodong Town, taking advantage of the opportunity of Harbin City building a vegetable base along the Hazhao Road, has focused on adjusting the agricultural structure, worked hard on greenhouse economy, vigorously developed the green vegetable economy, and guided farmers toward green and organic production. Today, Zhaodong Town has 3,500 greenhouses, 5 high-standard vegetable parks and 13 general vegetable parks. It has also established a professional planting cooperative, adopted a production and operation management model of unified planning, unified procurement, unified construction, unified technical standards, unified brand and unified sales, registered the fruit and vegetable trademark "Lü Tian Yuan". Through green food certification, it has formed an industrialized development model of "market + cooperative + greenhouse households".