Post-80s young man leaves education to go into agriculture

After a few years, Yang Qiu gained a more comprehensive understanding of strawberries and other crops.

In Shengshuitou Village, Henanzhai Town, Miyun, people often see a figure moving through the fields. He wears a pair of black-framed glasses, sunny and handsome. His name is Yang Qiu, a young man born in the 1980s. Two years ago, in pursuit of the taste of farm meals from his childhood and to develop green ecological agricultural products, Yang Qiu resigned from his job as a PE teacher at Tsinghua University Primary School and returned to his hometown to start a green agriculture business.

Yang Qiu is a young and passionate man. After graduating from Capital University of Physical Education and Sports in 2011, he became a PE teacher at Tsinghua University Primary School. But Yang Qiu, who grew up in the fields, always had his heart set on the fertile rural land. In recent years, with the popularity of green food, Yang Qiu came up with the idea of growing and raising green agricultural products. In 2013, Yang Qiu gave up his comfortable job in the city and returned to his hometown to start a business. He first helped villagers sell vegetables online, and later ran his own growing and breeding business.

Starting a business was not as simple as Yang Qiu had imagined. In June this year, Yang Qiu invested nearly 50,000 yuan to buy 1,000 free-range chicks and went into free-range chicken farming. The chicken coop was built on the mountain. Every day before dawn, Yang Qiu would arrive at the coop, mix feed and clean the coop, staying busy all day long. Although it was hard work, Yang Qiu did it with great enthusiasm. One day, Yang Qiu found that the chicks refused to return to the coop, and this went on for several days. Yang Qiu asked the village's experienced farmers for help and learned that rats, weasels and other animals on the mountain might have slipped into the coop at night and frightened the chicks. In order to find out where the rats and weasels were getting into the coop, Yang Qiu kept watch at the coop for several nights in a row. Yang Qiu said he stayed up for 5 days next to the coop before he found the weasel's "secret passage." It turned out that under a brick in the corner of the coop wall, the weasel had dug a hole and slipped in through it at night. After Yang Qiu blocked the hole, he gave the coop a thorough cleaning and checked it inside and out.

Not long after the "weasel incident," the chicks had a new problem. "The chicks started dying in batches, more than a dozen every day," Yang Qiu said. He was very anxious at the time and quickly found relevant experts, bringing the dead chickens to a veterinary hospital for dissection and analysis of the illness. The veterinarian told him that because of the obvious weather changes, the chicks had been infected with bacteria and viruses, and prescribed some chemical drugs for him to take back and feed the chickens, but Yang Qiu did not use them. "When I decided to resign and go into agriculture, I intended to do green ecological farming. If I fed the chicks chemical drugs, although they would recover faster, it would go against my original idea," Yang Qiu said. He went to several veterinary hospitals, and all of them prescribed chemical drugs. So he went to the village's experienced farmers and got a folk remedy. "Mash scallions, ginger and garlic into a paste and mix it into the feed. You also need some Chinese herbal medicines similar to the effects of banlangen, simmer them every day, mix them into the water and feed them to the chicks." Speaking of those days, Yang Qiu was full of emotion. Now, as the weather gradually turns cold, in addition to normal care, Yang Qiu still goes up the mountain every noon and evening to light fires to keep the chickens warm. "Electric heating lights are too strong and will stimulate the chicks, affecting the quality of the eggs," Yang Qiu said. Since he had taken this on, he could not fear hardship and had to do his best. Now, the chickens' condition has been greatly alleviated, and some chickens have begun laying eggs. More than 100 eggs can be collected every day, and they are quickly snapped up on the online store.

As the breeding operation gradually stabilized, Yang Qiu began to turn his attention to farming. This year, he cooperated with friends to contract 3 greenhouses to grow strawberries, and his life became even busier. Every day, Yang Qiu walked around the greenhouses several times. If a yellow spot appeared on any leaf, Yang Qiu would observe it carefully for a long time. The books on Yang Qiu's shelf also changed from novels to various farming training textbooks. "When I find a yellow spot on a leaf, I first observe whether there are similar cases, then search online for some information based on this phenomenon, and then look for solutions based on the information and the contents of the books," Yang Qiu said. Two strawberries had grown in the greenhouse a couple of days earlier, hidden under the leaves and very inconspicuous, but he discovered them. Perhaps because they contained his own efforts, those two strawberries tasted especially sweet to him.

In addition to studying planting knowledge diligently, the heavy snow some time ago also caused Yang Qiu a lot of hardship. "I used to love snow. When it snowed, I could go skiing and have snowball fights with friends, but this year I especially don't want it to snow. After it snows, I have to stand on the greenhouse and shovel snow. Not to mention the danger, it's also very hard to use force, and after a day my whole body aches," Yang Qiu said. After the snow this year, many of his former classmates and colleagues came to visit him, but he was busy shoveling snow off the greenhouses, laying cotton quilts and rolling them up, and had no time to entertain them, which made him feel quite sorry. Speaking of this, Yang Qiu paused and said, "Sometimes I feel conflicted. When I see others working, I'm working; when others are having fun, I'm still working. I doubt whether my choice is really the right one."

Now, Yang Qiu starts his day's work at 5 a.m. every morning, going to the breeding park to give the chickens water and feed and clean the coop, then to the planting park to pick vegetables. In the afternoon, he returns to his residence to take orders and run the online store, and in the evening he plans online sales. Faced with such a busy life, although Yang Qiu has had doubts, his desire to develop ecological agriculture and let more people eat healthy food has never changed. He is not only gradually expanding his business, but has also established a cooperative in the village, encouraging farmers to practice green agriculture and helping farmers sell agricultural products.