The Mushroom Road to Wealth: The Entrepreneurial Story of a Young Man from Rural Xichuan

At the Guyuan Edible Fungi Farmers' Professional Cooperative in Xichuan County, Nanyang City, the simple and capable founder of the cooperative, Qi Jinbo, is busy filling mushroom bags with the villagers. For more than 10 years, Qi Jinbo has carved out an entrepreneurial path leading farmers to prosperity through hard work and wisdom, turning tiny shiitake mushrooms into a big wealth-generating industry.

In 2000, Qi Jinbo happened to see a project for making money by growing edible fungi in a newspaper, and the idea of cultivating edible fungi took root. He went to learn from masters both within and outside the province, specializing in the cultivation techniques of shiitake mushrooms and Gastrodia elata. In 2001, Qi Jinbo carried out the collection, isolation, domestication, cultivation and trial production of shiitake mushroom spawn, earning more than 20,000 yuan that year. Through several years of practical exploration, the production scale kept expanding and new products were developed one after another. He successively established the Xichuan County Edible Fungi Research Institute, the Xichuan County Nongjiale Edible Fungi Technical Consulting Center, the Nanyang City Shengyuan Agricultural and Sideline Products Network, and the Xichuan County Guyuan Edible Fungi Farmers' Professional Cooperative, and registered the "Guyuan" brand trademark.

Qi Jinbo explained that since the edible fungi farmers' professional cooperative was founded, it has always regarded the introduction, promotion and innovation of technology as the foundation of its survival. It has established long-term cooperative relationships with the Provincial Academy of Agricultural Sciences and some well-known domestic edible fungi research institutions, repeatedly invited well-known domestic edible fungi experts to give lectures, training and production guidance, and repeatedly sent technical backbones to visit and learn elsewhere to improve their capabilities. The cooperative holds a members' meeting once a quarter to discuss the production and sales of edible fungi as well as industry development. It has implemented a "six unifications, three household deliveries" working mechanism, namely unified provision of spawn, unified quality standards, unified technical services, unified trademark, unified packaging and unified sales; technical training delivered to the household, technical guidance delivered to the household, and standardized production delivered to the household. It strictly ensures that production has records, flow can be traced, information can be queried, and safety can be traced back. This guarantees that the edible fungi are safe and healthy, and the visibility and influence of the "Guyuan" green pollution-free edible fungi brand registered by the cooperative continue to expand.

In order to open up the edible fungi sales market, Qi Jinbo and his technical backbones participated many times in edible fungi trade fairs at the provincial and even national level, and founded the Nanyang City Shengyuan Agricultural and Sideline Products Network, further broadening sales channels. The cooperative has also reached agreements with a number of domestic supermarkets, signed farm-to-supermarket contracts, and used the Shouguang, Shandong vegetable trading platform to sell some shiitake mushrooms as far as overseas.

At present, the cooperative has 3 demonstration bases, and its main cultivated varieties are shiitake mushrooms, Gastrodia elata and Polyporus umbellatus. The cooperative's members have also grown from 7 at the beginning to 108, and members' dividends have increased from more than 5,000 yuan to more than 10,000 yuan, greatly stimulating farmers' enthusiasm to join the cooperative and driving surrounding farming households to achieve common prosperity.

In 2013, the cooperative made it a top priority to support the west with science and technology and to persist in promoting projects and distinctive industry development aimed at enhancing the region's "blood-making" capacity. Making Guyuan Cooperative's targeted technical support to the west a major highlight of the cooperative. Qi Jinbo personally led the Guyuan technical team to reach technical cooperation agreements with the Shanlizhen Edible Fungi Cooperative in Changwu County, the Xianyang Longtou Edible Fungi Professional Cooperative, and Gansu Chongxin County Fangsheng Co., Ltd., and this alliance of strong partners effectively promoted the development of local edible fungi research and application, laying the foundation for expanding the edible fungi industry in the west.

Speaking about the cooperative's development, Qi Jinbo said he hopes that more people will engage in edible fungi production through Guyuan Cooperative, making tiny edible fungi a big industry that generates wealth.