Red Flag Family Farm in Yuli County, Xinjiang, has built a 1,500-mu goji berry seedling base

On February 23, just after the Spring Festival, more than 20 workers began bustling about in one of the greenhouses at Red Flag Family Farm in Yuli County.

In the vast greenhouse, workers carefully transplanted green goji berry seedlings one by one into nutrient soil. After more than a month of cultivation, they will be sold to Hotan Prefecture, Kashgar Prefecture, and Qinghai, Gansu, Inner Mongolia and other places across the country.

Cultivating goji berry seedlings is meticulous work that requires workers to be careful enough. Too much force can easily damage the young seedlings, while too little force means the goji berry seedlings cannot be successfully planted and survive. Dong Changyu, a villager from Tuanjie Township in Yuli County, had only been working for three days, yet was already like a seasoned seedling worker. "This work is not tiring, and there is still 80 yuan in wages a day. That comes to more than 2,000 yuan a month. I am quite happy working here," Dong Changyu said.

Today, the goji berry seedling base at Red Flag Family Farm in Yuli County has provided employment for more than 200 local surplus rural laborers like Dong Changyu.

"The farm has a total seedling base of 1,500 mu, including 500 mu of greenhouses and 1,000 mu of open field, with both black goji berries and red goji berries," Lu Weifeng, head of Red Flag Family Farm in Yuli County, told reporters. This batch of goji berry seedlings will be gradually marketed from late March to early May and delivered to farmers inside and outside Xinjiang.

Because he valued the goji berry industry's high ecological value and economic benefits, in 2014 Lu Weifeng set his sights on developing the goji berry industry and invited fruit tree experts from the autonomous region's Academy of Forestry Sciences to conduct research together. After a year of repeated trials, his team finally cultivated goji berry seedlings with relatively high survival and fruiting rates, and in early 2015 also established the first black goji berry research institute in the prefecture.

"From last August to now, customers have successively signed order contracts with us for 30 million seedlings. I also hope that through my own efforts, I can help more farmers transform and become prosperous," Lu Weifeng said.