Growing Ginger Puts Old Yang of Anshun, Guizhou on the Road to Prosperity

It is another bumper harvest year. Taohuahu Village in Qibo Town, Pingba District, Anshun City is bustling with activity, as every household is busy harvesting small yellow ginger. Villager Yang Sheng made a handsome profit last year from growing 13 mu of small yellow ginger, and this year he expanded to 18 mu, with an estimated income of more than 100,000 yuan, making him a well-known large-scale grower in the area.

"In the past, I grew corn and vegetables and earned just over 10,000 yuan a year, and with a family to support, life was tight. Now that I grow small yellow ginger, the government has found good sales channels for us, and life is getting more and more prosperous. Thanks to small yellow ginger, I built a two-story house, and after selling the ginger this year I'll renovate it and make it even nicer," Yang Sheng said with a smile.

Qibo Town has mountainous terrain, and the adjustment of the agricultural industry structure is constrained by objective conditions. To blaze a new path for agriculture that is high-quality, efficient and income-boosting, the town Party committee and government, building on traditional agriculture, have worked hard to create the Qibo small yellow ginger industry brand. In 2014, the Qibo Town Ginger Planting Cooperative was established, with more than 200 members. This year the whole town invested 1 million yuan to set up the Taohuahu Village ginger planting demonstration base, with a planting area of more than 2,000 mu, increasing farmers' income by over a million yuan.

At present, Qibo small yellow ginger has passed the Ministry of Agriculture's pollution-free product certification and the provincial pollution-free product origin certification. Based on the principle of "increasing agricultural efficiency and farmers' income," and in accordance with Anshun City's requirements of "agricultural parks, industrialized supply chains, and commodified products," the town has adopted the "company + cooperative + farmers" operating model to vigorously promote small yellow ginger planting. Through company plus e-commerce operating platforms, it has opened up sales channels, broadened its market reach, further expanded the planting scale, improved quality, made every effort to build an agricultural product brand, and widened the channels for farmers to increase their income and become prosperous.

As of now, Pingba District of Anshun City has invested 36.66 million yuan in various types of poverty alleviation funds, focusing on a series of industrialized poverty alleviation projects such as vegetables, rural tourism, high-quality walnuts, premium fruits, high-quality potatoes, ecological livestock farming, and specialty planting. In 2015, it is expected to lift 12,000 people out of poverty.