Mushroom cultivation gives Lijin college-graduate village officials an umbrella to prosperity
Lijin college-graduate village officials use small mushrooms to hold up an umbrella of prosperity
Jiangjiazhuang Village in Lijin County is a traditional agricultural village mainly growing cotton and corn. To its east lies the Xiaolizui dangerous section of the Yellow River, where the water flows swiftly and constantly erodes the farmland along the river, leaving the villagers suffering greatly from floods. Seeing this, the villagers began growing fast-growing poplar. Although they no longer had to worry about floods, fast-growing poplar takes a long time to mature and yields a slow return on costs, which restricted the villagers' efforts to increase income and prosperity. After college-graduate village official Shi Cheng took up his post in the village, he saw this situation and made freeing the villagers' minds and increasing farmers' income his first priority, repeatedly leading villagers on study trips elsewhere.
"I don't want to just drift along in the village, and in recent years grain crop prices have fluctuated greatly. The villagers work hard for a whole year and still don't earn much, which feels really bad. We must change the villagers' current situation," college-graduate village official Shi Cheng said, explaining his thoughts in plain words.
In order to master the technique of growing edible fungi under the forest, Shi Cheng led villagers many times to Guangrao, Shouguang and other places to learn under-forest edible fungus cultivation techniques. To save money and cut the cost of building greenhouses, Shi Cheng personally inspected the materials market, explored and learned greenhouse-building techniques, and together with the villagers made greenhouse materials and built a mushroom shed. In August this year, 10,000 jin of mushroom substrate was put in for experimental planting.
Easier said than done. Oyster mushroom cultivation requires not only good control of cultivation humidity, ventilation and temperature, but also good mastery of techniques for preventing pests, diseases and pathogens. For a young man just out of school, all of this was a blank, and he had to explore and learn it himself. Shi Cheng came to the shed every day to observe, learning while exploring, constantly recording the air humidity and temperature each day and observing the growth of the mushroom logs. In mid-September 2015, after a light rain, mushroom buds began appearing one after another on the logs. "When I saw the little mushrooms growing, I was extremely excited, and felt that the efforts we had made together were finally about to bear fruit." From then on, with more cultivation experience, the oyster mushrooms grew better and better.
After the difficulties in cultivation techniques were overcome one by one, how to sell the oyster mushrooms became another "hurdle" facing Shi Cheng. In order to sell the fresh oyster mushrooms, Shi Cheng picked them before 4 a.m. every day and took them to the market's morning fair at 5 a.m. "I remember the first time I opened my mouth to hawk them, I really had no confidence and felt very embarrassed. I had to summon all my courage before I shouted the first call. Thinking about it now, it was actually quite an interesting thing." Shi Cheng smiled shyly as he talked about the first time he went to the market to sell mushrooms. After a period of effort, Shi Cheng's mushrooms were quickly accepted by the market. More than 100 jin of mushrooms picked each morning sold out in less than an hour.
On the road to pursuing his dream, he also faced a series of problems, such as the slow growth of under-forest oyster mushrooms in winter and large price fluctuations. "On the one hand, I will continue to lead the villagers in mastering cultivation techniques well and increase output. On the other hand, the village has many idle chicken houses. By using the gap period after layer hen chick rearing ends and converting the farmers' chicken houses into cultivation rooms, mushrooms can also be grown in winter." Shi Cheng made a new round of plans full of confidence.