Growing Organic Grapes for a Better Life: Zhang Guoping Leads Villagers to Prosper Together

Recently, at the organic grape planting base of the Jinfeng Grape Planting Professional Cooperative in Shanlian Town, Nanxun District, Huzhou City, the grapes in the greenhouses were growing vigorously, and Zhang Guoping, chairman of the cooperative, was weeding under the guidance of agricultural technicians using a combination of physical and manual methods.

"As the number of greenhouses at the base increases, farmers do not earn much more from growing traditional vegetables. Leveraging our location advantage near the suburbs, switching from traditional vegetables to organic grapes, developing eco-friendly picking tourism, and organizing technicians to teach planting techniques hand by hand - this is an important part of our work to help farmers increase their income," said the head of the town's agricultural technology center who accompanied the visit.

According to reports, Zhang Guoping converted the village's traditional vegetable cultivation to greenhouse organic grape growing. The grapes he grows are of fine varieties and sweet in taste, with economic returns more than 20% higher than those of ordinary farmers' grapes. In recent years, under the leadership of his scientific cultivation techniques, more farmers in the surrounding area have taken up grape growing. In 2010, Shanlian Town established its first grape professional cooperative, and he was elected as its first chairman.

When it comes to his bond with grapes, Zhang Guoping immediately opened up: "In 2006, the town's adult school held a grape cultivation skills training class, and I signed up on my own initiative. Through the training, I planned to build a career in grape growing." When he first started growing grapes, Zhang Guoping also experimented in his own contracted field, applying the knowledge and techniques learned from the training class, trying to cultivate more than 3 mu of grape seedlings by learning on the job. But due to a lack of growing experience, the grapes he grew the first time were not much different from those of other farmers, and he often encountered problems such as pests and diseases and fruit drop, with little increase in economic returns. He realized that only by growing fine varieties and taking the path of technological entrepreneurship could there be a way forward. So he signed up for another skills training class at the Shanlian teaching site of Huzhou Farmers College, humbly consulting agricultural machinery experts with his questions, and sometimes inviting experts to the vineyard on site. Through careful study and repeated pondering, Zhang Guoping mastered a set of scientific cultivation methods for growing organic grapes. Today, the grapes he grows are not only plump and beautifully shaped, but also high in quality and sweet in taste, and he himself has become a well-known large-scale grape grower far and wide.

However, after his entrepreneurial success, he was not satisfied with the status quo: "I want to lead the villagers around me to prosper together." After the town's grape professional cooperative was established, he took the initiative to teach farmers cultivation techniques and experience, providing growers with one-stop services from seedlings to sales, from pest and disease control to integrated fertilizer and water technology. Under his careful guidance, more than 50 farming households in the surrounding area were motivated to engage in grape growing, with a planting area of more than 300 mu, making grape growing large-scale and industrialized. Through his efforts, the cooperative also uniformly registered the "Xiaying" grape trademark. Thanks to ecological cultivation and guaranteed quality, the product has always been in short supply.