Luzhou Young Man Gives Up a 20,000-yuan Monthly Salary to Return Home and Grow Kudzu to Get Rich
Recently, at the kudzu planting base in Longtang Village, Baijie Town, Naxi District, Luzhou City, a young man was busy placing the dug-up kudzu roots into a back basket.
His name is Zou Bin. In 2007, he returned home to start a business and began growing kudzu on a large scale. Before returning home to grow kudzu, he was a well-known barber at a hair styling company in Luzhou, earning a monthly salary of 20,000 yuan. The reason he gave up his high salary to return home and grow kudzu was that he saw the development prospects of the kudzu industry, a new ecological path to wealth.
A Table of Kudzu Dishes Made a Barber Give Up His High Salary
Zou Bin is 35 years old this year. Twenty years ago, after graduating from junior high school, Zou Bin went alone to the urban area of Luzhou to learn barbering. Two years later, he became the "top scissors" of that hair styling company. In order to keep Zou Bin at the company for the long term, the boss not only gave him a high salary but also granted him a certain number of shares, allowing Zou Bin to receive "dividends" of tens of thousands of yuan or even over 100,000 yuan each year. However, something that happened in October 2006 changed Zou Bin's pursuits. At that time, Zou Bin accompanied two friends to visit a relative's home, and a table of kudzu dishes opened his eyes: "kudzu stewed chicken," "kudzu stewed pig trotters," "kudzu twice-cooked pork," "cold dressed kudzu," "kudzu wine," "kudzu tea"... one distinctive kudzu delicacy after another broadened Zou Bin's horizons. He asked the relative and learned that this kind of powder kudzu from Taiwan, China could not only be eaten as a vegetable but also had medicinal value and health benefits, with promising market prospects.
Afterward, Zou Bin spent two months traveling to Guangxi, Guangdong, Jiangxi, Hubei and other provinces to investigate kudzu cultivation. In 2007, Zou Bin trial-planted 1,000 Taiwan, China powder kudzu plants in the fields of his hometown, beginning his path of growing ecological kudzu.
Controlling the Growth of Kudzu Lateral Vines
As the saying goes, all beginnings are hard. After Zou Bin planted 1,000 kudzu seedlings in the field in front of his home, he drove back every two or three days to water them, inspect the seedlings, apply additional fertilizer, replace missing seedlings, and prune and train the vines. In order to master kudzu cultivation techniques, he also searched online for relevant planting and management experience, learning and exploring as he went. "The effects of kudzu are concentrated in the roots, and the key to cultivation is to grow strong main roots," Zou Bin said. In order to promote the growth of the main vines of kudzu, excess lateral vines must be cut off. But kudzu lateral vines grow too fast, requiring pruning once every 10 days, which means a heavy labor load and high labor costs. For this reason, through repeated experiments, Zou Bin adopted the method of removing buds to control the terminal buds, and only then controlled the growth of lateral vines, promoting the main vines to grow thick and strong and the axillary buds to develop.
After the trial planting succeeded, Zou Bin cultivated fine kudzu seedlings and solved the problem of seedling constraints. Half a year later, through the local method of "cutting healthy bud nodes, inserting them in cuttings, disinfecting and cultivating them," Zou Bin successfully cultivated tens of thousands of vigorous seedlings.
Cultivating fine kudzu seedlings also has its particular requirements, and two key steps must be grasped. One is that only 1 cm should be left above the healthy bud node, and 6 cm should be left below the healthy bud node. If too much is left, the neck of the root will be large while the root will be small, so in actual production this length must be controlled. The second key step is that if the healthy bud node is cut into a flat opening, then many roots will emerge, and none of them will grow large; it must be cut into a slanted opening, so that fewer roots are inserted, and the yield per unit area will be higher.
Deep Processing of Kudzu Increases Benefits 10-fold
Walking into Zou Bin's display store for kudzu series products, one finds a dazzling array of kudzu series products such as kudzu wine, kudzu noodles, kudzu tea, and dried kudzu slices. "Besides eating kudzu as a vegetable, deep processing and fine processing of kudzu powder is the real way to make money," Zou Bin said. Processing more than 1 yuan worth of kudzu per jin into a series of products increases the benefits by at least 10 times.
Since 2009, in addition to renting 100 mu of land to establish a planting base, Zou Bin also founded the "Luzhou Hongshiliang Kudzu Specialized Cooperative," which has driven more than 150 households of villagers to join the kudzu planting team, with the kudzu planting area reaching 500 mu.
The yield of one-year kudzu is 2,500 kg per mu, and the yield of two-year kudzu is 5,000 kg per mu, and the longer the planting time, the greater the yield. Facing at least more than 500 tons of fresh kudzu coming to market each year, Zou Bin joined hands with a kudzu processing factory in Chongqing to expand kudzu products from single kudzu powder to a series of products such as kudzu tea, kudzu wine, and kudzu noodles, extending the kudzu industry chain. Zou Bin's kudzu series products not only occupy most of the kudzu market share in Luzhou, but are also sold to Chengdu, Chongqing, Shanghai and other cities, with annual income of more than 10 million yuan.
"After the kudzu planting area exceeds 1,000 mu next year, our cooperative will set up its own processing factory, and the output of processed fresh kudzu will be increased to more than 1,000 tons, so as to meet more citizens' demand for kudzu products," Zou Bin said confidently.