"Busy man" Liu Songnian: Takes thirty phone calls a day
Every year around the New Year, it is the busiest time for Liu Songnian.
Liu Songnian is 42 years old this year. He is the head of the Nianfeng Vegetable Planting Farmers' Professional Cooperative in Zhangdian Township, Qiaocheng District, and is also a "busy man" well known to the local people. He says he takes an average of thirty phone calls a day. At the end of the year, because of vegetable prices, he has to coordinate relations among the various sellers. At the same time, this period is a critical time for raising seedlings, and he also has to answer phone inquiries from vegetable farmers in the township about vegetable planting issues.
Liu Songnian is inspecting the growth of watermelon seedlings
Greenhouse seedling cultivation: one seedling can bear two or three melons
On the morning of January 10, in the vegetable greenhouses of Liu Songnian's Nianfeng Vegetable Planting Farmers' Professional Cooperative, several farmers were busy raising watermelon seedlings. In front of them were black seedling trays with many grooves. They put watermelon seeds into the grooves, then spread substrate soil over them, and placed them in the greenhouse for seedling cultivation. "After a period of time, these watermelon seedlings and pumpkin seedlings are grafted, and on average one seedling can bear two or three large watermelons," one farmer told the reporter.
Liu Songnian said that by developing modern intelligent greenhouse seedling cultivation sheds and carrying out unified, centralized seedling cultivation, they have fundamentally solved the traditional, backward and scattered household-by-household seedling cultivation methods of vegetable farmers, reduced the seedling cultivation steps, saved both labor and time, and at the same time avoided the occurrence of diseases, increased output, raised income, and also increased the enthusiasm of cooperative members and other vegetable farmers for growing vegetables.
Training members: combining training with practice
As the founder of the cooperative, Liu Songnian told the reporter that in 2008, before the Nianfeng Vegetable Planting Farmers' Professional Cooperative was established, he was also an ordinary farmer. Now the cooperative has grown to more than 1,000 people, and has successively built a 1,000-mu pollution-free, green vegetable planting base in Houlilou Village, Houyao Village and Zhangge Village of Zhangdian Township, with an annual output of more than 10 million jin of high-quality vegetables and more than 6 million high-quality seedlings, which can meet the seedling needs of 4,000 mu of vegetable bases for 3,000 vegetable-farming households.
Not only that, the cooperative also holds 20 training activities for other young farmers every year, combining training with practice. "Through training and demonstration planting, it has driven more than 5,000 vegetable-farming households and rural young people in surrounding townships to engage in pollution-free vegetable planting.
Fame spreads far and wide; vegetable farmers from other places come to cooperate
During the reporter's interview, several clients from Shangqiu, Henan came to the cooperative attracted by its reputation, hoping to introduce some vegetable seedlings from Liu Songnian. "Nianfeng Vegetable Planting Cooperative is quite famous in our area. I also heard about it from others, and drove here specially from Shangqiu. I also want to learn planting and grafting techniques from the leader here," one client told the reporter with a smile.
National Farmers' Professional Cooperative Demonstration Cooperative, National Vegetable Standard Garden, Anhui Provincial Modern Agricultural Science and Technology Demonstration Park... A series of honors did not make Liu Songnian stop moving forward. "At present, my planting base is already relatively mature and has been developing steadily all along, so I am thinking about how to innovate my products so that the land's benefits can be brought into full play to the greatest extent," Liu Songnian said. Now, in the greenhouses, various vegetable seedlings such as watermelon, pepper, eggplant and tomato are being raised. Seeing that these seedlings are growing very well, Liu Songnian is full of confidence in leading cooperative members and farming households to increase production.