Enterprise Drives Farmers to Grow Reishi Mushrooms, Teaching the Secrets of Increasing Income and Getting Rich

Yang Zhaoqun is 37 years old this year and graduated from Lishui Agricultural School. After graduation, she has been engaged in agricultural technical guidance work and is the main person in charge of Zhejiang Longquan Jiabao Biotechnology Co., Ltd. This year she was named a Lishui Elite Agricultural Master.

Although she is not old, Yang Zhaoqun has already been engaged in reishi mushroom research for a full 17 years. In the cabinet in her office are displayed the various honors she has received, including 9 invention patents and 3 Zhejiang Provincial Science and Technology Achievement Awards, making her a veritable "veteran" in the reishi mushroom field. The reishi mushroom spore powder collection bag she invented is simple and convenient to operate. It can not only collect all the reishi mushroom spore powder ejected from the gills, but also effectively avoid the shortcomings of traditional techniques such as long harvesting time, undersized spore particles, and susceptibility to mold.

In order to pass on the technology to growers and produce better-quality reishi mushrooms, Yang Zhaoqun often goes out into the fields to guide growers, telling them the best time to harvest reishi mushroom fruiting bodies and reishi mushroom spore powder. "Many farmers do not understand professional knowledge and think that the longer the reishi mushroom grows, the higher the yield, and only then can there be good returns. This idea is actually wrong." Yang Zhaoqun told reporters that in order to persuade them to change their thinking, it often takes a lot of ideological work, communication with them, or experiments to convince them.

At the same time, around the target requirements of relevant agricultural standardization demonstration projects, Yang Zhaoqun strengthened contact with farmers, intensified technical guidance, and increased the implementation of standards. In 2014, the company established a 300-mu standardized reishi mushroom planting base, radiating and driving 200 farming households. The base's annual output of reishi mushroom fruiting bodies was 150 tons, with more than 30 tons of reishi mushroom spore powder, and annual sales exceeding 50 million yuan.

Jiabao Company formed a community of shared interests with farmers, using the enterprise to lead farmers, actively developing "order-based production," implementing contracted purchasing, and forming an operation model of "leading enterprise + base + farmers." This enabled the enterprise and farmers to break through a simple buying-and-selling relationship and establish an industrial cooperative relationship with consistent goals, division of labor and collaboration, complementary advantages, and shared benefits, integrating production and processing into an organic whole and achieving a "win-win" through the linkage of production and sales.

Yang Zhaoqun told reporters that next she plans to introduce technical talent from outside and increase investment and research in reishi mushroom variety breeding. She said that in addition to making breakthroughs in variety breeding, she will also increase research efforts in biological prevention and control of pests and diseases.