Jiangmen woman returns to her hometown to farm, now earning hundreds of millions of yuan a year
Jiangmen female university graduate who went home to farm now earns hundreds of millions of yuan a year
A "heartwarming story" has spread widely through the streets and alleys of Enping: female university graduate Huang Haiyan gave up a well-paid job with good benefits in the provincial capital to return to her hometown and take root in the countryside as a "farmer," developing agriculture. In July 2002, after graduating from the Guangdong Provincial Agricultural Management Cadre College with a major in horticulture in the Department of Biotechnology, Huang Haiyan went to work at the Guangzhou Institute of Landscape Gardening. In 2006, she gave up this job with a monthly salary of 6,000 yuan, and carrying her ideals and beliefs of "getting rich through science and technology, serving the countryside," she resolutely returned to her hometown of Enping and founded the Lantian Nursery, cultivating high-quality test-tube banana seedlings and beginning her path of independent entrepreneurship.
As a model of a university graduate returning home to start a business, Huang Haiyan achieved a great deal in Enping. On the basis of ordinary crop cultivation, Lanhai vigorously developed new agricultural products, such as rainbow tomatoes, colored peppers, greenhouse cucumbers and spices, and introduced advanced agricultural and deep-processing technologies, leading surrounding farmers to get rich together.
On December 19, 2013, Lanhai welcomed an important development when the company signed a cooperation agreement with China Aerospace Corporation Group. The project for the breeding and demonstration promotion of Chinese aerospace varieties settled at Lanhai Company, bringing aerospace seeds to the hometown of China's first pilot Feng Ru. Thereafter, through the selection, breeding and promotion of superior aerospace seed varieties, crops such as lotus seeds, rice, yardlong beans, peanuts, flowers and peppers have already borne fruit in Enping.
After years of accumulation, Lanhai's annual output value grew steadily. Huang Haiyan proposed that the company's short-term goal is to drive 3,000 households to start businesses, find employment and get rich, promote more than 100,000 mu of superior aerospace varieties, and increase the per capita income of growers by 5,000 yuan per year; the long-term goal is to drive the promotion and application of improved varieties and methods across more than 700,000 mu in Jiangmen, with an annual output value of more than 2.3 billion yuan, Lanhai Company's annual revenue exceeding 100 million yuan, and striving to replicate the Lanhai model across the country.
Huang Haiyan's entrepreneurial path was very bumpy. In early 2006, she raised 100,000 yuan, leased 13 mu of land in the village, purchased equipment, put up 13 greenhouses, and also set up a laboratory at home, bought primary banana seedlings, and hired workers. However, she found that the capital investment far exceeded the budget, so she tightened her belt, and one person did the work of many. By day she was a farmer, and by night she conducted test-tube banana seedling experiments in the laboratory... Gradually, the nursery got on track, and in 2007 she earned her first pot of gold, recovering more than 100,000 yuan in costs. In 2008, Huang Haiyan's entrepreneurial dream suffered a heavy blow. In August and September of that year, two exceptionally severe typhoons caused heavy losses to the nursery she had worked so hard to run. Of the 13 greenhouses, 11 were completely destroyed, more than 90% of the banana seedlings were lost, and the economic loss exceeded 100,000 yuan.
She was first elected as a deputy to the Jiangmen Municipal People's Congress in 2011, and was elected as a deputy to the National People's Congress in 2013; her trajectory involved something of a leap. At the 2014 National Two Sessions, Huang Haiyan had a conversation with General Secretary Xi: "Hello, General Secretary Xi, I am a rural entrepreneur who is a university graduate." That is how Huang Haiyan introduced herself to General Secretary Xi Jinping. "Have you graduated?" Faced with General Secretary Xi's question, Huang Haiyan replied: "I have already graduated. I am still a farmer representative."