Ten Years of Taxus chinensis Cultivation Weaves a Dream of Ecological Prosperity
When I met Ye Shigen, head of Zhejiang Lvfeng Agriculture and Forestry Technology Co., Ltd., he was busy in the Taxus chinensis base. "Whenever I have free time, I come to the base. Looking at the greenery of the seedlings puts me in a great mood," Ye Shigen said. In conversation, every word and action of his revealed the plain qualities of daring to lead and daring to endure hardship.
Ye Shigen was born in 1966 into a poor family in Jiansheng Village, Zhulong Town, a true child of the mountains. His independent and strong-willed character drove him out of the mountains to make his way in the wider world. Through several years of effort, he earned his first pot of gold. He said with feeling: "Success comes from a bold dream, the right direction and unremitting effort."
In 2003, Ye Shigen founded Zhejiang Lvfeng Agriculture and Forestry Technology Co., Ltd. Through careful market research and analysis, he chose Taxus chinensis, known as the "plant giant panda", as the direction for developing a distinctive industry, and established long-term good cooperative relationships with research institutions and famous universities inside and outside the province, hiring many experts and professors to provide technical support and establishing advanced seedling cultivation and breeding techniques and market operation mechanisms.
In those years, he threw himself entirely into the nursery base. He sought advice and learned from first-class domestic enterprises, invited scientific and technical personnel to guide him, and started learning everything from scratch, carefully exploring and earnestly accumulating experience. After many trials, tender young seedlings finally grew on the nursery land. With experience in cultivating saplings, he not only expanded the nursery but also began renting mountain land to plant rare tree species. In the end, he established 25 bases and more than 10,000 mu of rare tree species, weaving the "ecological prosperity dream" of Taxus chinensis.
"Whether used as medicinal raw material or as a landscaping tree species, Taxus chinensis seedlings deliver very considerable returns. I want to pass on the technology to more growers so that more people can increase their incomes and prosper together," Ye Shigen said. In order to provide technical guidance to Taxus chinensis farmers and help them obtain higher returns, while continuously supplying Taxus chinensis to the outside, he compiled the "Cultivation Technical Regulations for Southern Taxus chinensis" with the help of higher-level competent departments and scientific research units, creating Zhejiang Province's first local standard for cultivating Taxus chinensis and filling the gap in Zhejiang Province's lack of a standardized planting technical standard for southern Taxus chinensis.
Through more than 10 years of development, Zhejiang Lvfeng Agriculture and Forestry Technology Co., Ltd. has become a comprehensive agricultural enterprise integrating biotechnology research and development, flower and seedling cultivation, breeding of rare and endangered plants, landscape greening engineering design and construction, ecological circular high-efficiency farming, and agricultural leisure sightseeing tourism. Ye Shigen has also been elected vice president of the Zhejiang Flower and Tree Broker Branch, vice president of the Zhejiang Greening Seedling Branch, and president of the Lishui Flower Association, and has won honorary titles including Zhejiang Agriculture and Forestry Science and Technology Demonstration Household and one of Zhejiang's Top Ten Seedling Brokers.