"Walnut King" Li Xingsheng Leads Villagers to Prosperity
Li Xingsheng inspects the growth of the walnuts.
In Yunyang District there is a retired township official praised by everyone as the "most beautiful retired township official." He led the villagers in turning gullied barren hills into a famous mountain of flowers and fruit, successfully realizing his entrepreneurial dream of adding greenery and gaining wealth. He is Li Xingsheng, general manager of Hubei Fengshen Forestry and Fruit Co., Ltd., a leader in becoming rich through science and technology, and chairman of the Yunyang District Shengyuan Walnut Professional Cooperative. Li Xingsheng is over sixty years old. Because of the large scale of his walnut planting and his extensive professional knowledge, the villagers affectionately call him the "Walnut King."
In 2004, after retiring from his post as a township official, Li Xingsheng conceived the idea of starting a second business and developing the walnut industry. After reading a large number of professional books on walnuts, taking out a loan of more than 100,000 yuan, and successively inspecting walnut bases in Henan, Shaanxi, Shanxi, Hubei and other places, Li Xingsheng transferred 300 mu of land in Qingshan Village and Weipingsi Village, Tanjiawan Town, Yunyang District, and built a walnut demonstration orchard. In 2006, the first batch of walnuts planted by Li Xingsheng grew promisingly, and that year's income exceeded one million yuan.
From 2011 to 2014, Li Xingsheng invested more than 10 million yuan successively to transfer more than 2,000 mu of land in Heitaoshuya Village, Qingshan Village and other places in Tanjiawan Town to develop "Qingxiang walnuts." Farmers working in the walnut base earned a monthly income of more than 3,000 yuan, and technicians earned more than 6,000 yuan per month. Many farming households increased their annual income by more than 20,000 yuan from this alone.
Li Xingsheng gradually established a development model of "cooperative + base + farmers." Through the three guarantees and one service measures (guaranteed variety purity, guaranteed "fruit in 3 years and full production in 5 years," guaranteed product buyback, and follow-up technical services), he greatly stimulated local farmers' enthusiasm for planting walnuts. In just a few years, this radiated to and drove more than 1,000 households in 14 villages, including Qingshan Village, Weipingsi Village and Heitaoshuya Village, to develop 20,000 mu of walnuts, and led 100 large walnut growers with more than 30 mu each to develop the walnut industry together. Today, Li Xingsheng's company has developed into a high-tech modern agricultural industrialization leading enterprise integrating walnut cultivation, introduction of improved varieties, promotion of improved varieties, technical services, seedling breeding, and product purchase and processing, with annual income exceeding ten million yuan. "Next, I plan to build a ten-thousand-mu walnut base in Yunyang District, with annual income reaching 300 to 500 million yuan. I will drive 20,000 farming households to develop the walnut industry, build the company's base into a national-level walnut demonstration base, and build a walnut deep-processing enterprise with an annual processing capacity of more than 10,000 tons," Li Xingsheng said.