Xu Lizhen's Heart Tied to Barren Hills, Developing Agriculture to Lead Everyone to Shared Prosperity

As the saying goes, one day after the Frost's Descent solar term, one more drop of tea oil rises up the tree. After six years of growing oil tea, Xu Lizhen knows this principle well. This year, the fruiting rate of her more than 500 mu (mu) oil tea base was higher than in previous years. If harvested after the Frost's Descent solar term, not only would the quality be good, but the oil yield would also be high.

Unfortunately, the weather did not cooperate. After the Frost's Descent solar term, it rained for more than half a month, and the oil tea fruit harvest was greatly affected.

Looking at the fruit trees with damaged branches and leaves, Xu Lizhen said: "In recent years the climate has been poor, and farmers' profits have shrunk dramatically. Many of my peers around me have quit." "Have you thought about changing careers?" the reporter asked. "No. If I quit, the 153 cooperative members who work with me would all lose their jobs," Xu Lizhen said.

Xu Lizhen, 48 years old this year, is a well-known farmer technician and entrepreneurial talent in Sanmen County. Over 15 years of entrepreneurship, her heart has been tied to barren hills, and she has cultivated them carefully, leading her fellow villagers onto a road to prosperity.

Heart Tied to Barren Hills, Developing Agriculture

In 1998, due to the restructuring of a state-owned enterprise, Xu Lizhen was laid off and took up work as an insurance salesperson.

By a chance opportunity, she heard that a 100-mu bayberry orchard in her hometown was up for contract and the price was very cheap. Xu Lizhen thought that she might as well contract the bayberry orchard, so that when the bayberries ripened in the future she could invite clients to taste them and strengthen relationships. With a try-it-and-see attitude, Xu Lizhen began the farmer's life of "a body of sweat on sunny days, a body of mud on rainy days."

Because she was not from a farming background, Xu Lizhen knew very little agricultural technical knowledge, so she visited agricultural experts everywhere and worked hard to improve her planting and care techniques. When on business trips to the city, she would go to bookstores to replenish her "spiritual food," buying whatever she liked and taking it home. After several years, her room was piled full of books on growing various fruits and vegetables.

Although contracting the bayberry orchard was initially an unintentional act, once she truly started growing bayberries, Xu Lizhen was not careless at all. From technical cultivation to grafting new seedlings, everything was managed in perfect order. Gradually, the focus of her work shifted to agriculture, enriching her agricultural knowledge and improving her skills while finding ways to develop new crops on the barren hills.

In 2002, Xu Lizhen took out all her savings to contract more than 1,000 mu of barren hills in villages such as Shaoxia and Meikeng Hu, developing the cultivation of premium fruits such as bayberry, honey pomelo and Xiangmei plum. In 2004, she contracted more than 3,600 mu of barren hills on Lutian Mountain at an altitude of more than 400 m, planting fruits and seedlings such as Dongkui bayberry and oil tea, becoming the city's largest individual high-mountain Dongkui bayberry production base. Her path of agricultural industrialization had taken its stride.

Uniting Farmers on the Road to Branding

Unlike many farmers who are content with producing and selling on their own, years of marketing experience told her that developing agriculture must follow the path of "what others lack, I have; what others have, I make better."

After many rounds of market research and expert guidance, Xu Lizhen gradually moved into new varieties and high-quality crops. In Shaoxia Village, she planted the then-famous Dongkui bayberry, capturing the market with superior quality; in Meikeng Hu, she planted early-maturing Jusen apples, which produced returns in the very first year. At the same time, she also transformed 100 mu of low-yield bayberry in Geshui Shao Village, grafting half with Dongkui bayberry and cultivating half with a new variety - Qiushui Zaodamei. When this fruit first came on the market, it sold for the highest price in the entire county, and other farmers rushed to follow suit and improve their varieties.

With keen observation, Xu Lizhen also realized that farmers working alone, with limited strength and influence, could not seize the right to speak in the market, resulting in the phenomenon of increased output without increased income. So she joined with 16 major growers in the county to found the Sanmen County Qiushui Huahua Fruit and Flower Professional Cooperative, registered the "Qiushui Mountain" brand fruit trademark, and took the path of large-scale operation, standardized production and branded marketing.

In 2007, "Qiushui Mountain" bayberry passed national organic product certification; in 2008 it won the Taizhou Famous Brand Product award; in 2010, the "Qiushui Mountain" trademark won the title of Taizhou Famous Trademark. "Qiushui Mountain" brand fruits gradually spread beyond Taizhou and across the country.

Developing Agritourism to Lead Villagers to Prosperity

Personal success did not make Xu Lizhen smug; what she thought about more was how the people of the Tingpang mountain area could escape poverty. "One person being rich does not count as being rich; only when everyone is rich is there real drive," This is the sentence Xu Lizhen says most often.

Since founding the cooperative, she has on multiple occasions at her own expense invited provincial and municipal agricultural experts to provide on-site technical guidance to farmers more than 500 person-times, lectured to major growers and laid-off workers with 455 person-times trained, and distributed more than 500 copies of technical materials. More than 70 households began growing fruit and joined the cooperative because of her influence.

Under Xu Lizhen's leadership, the cooperative has grown to 153 member households, with total assets of 5.0384 million yuan, linking 1,500 farmer households, and a planting area of 16,900 mu.

With workers' wages rising year by year and crop output value declining due to climate reasons, many growers either chose to quit or reduced their planting area, but Xu Lizhen chose to persist.

She joined with Sanmen Jianyi Jia Food Co., Ltd. to establish a camellia oil processing plant. At the same time, she also plans to combine her fruit base with the natural scenery of Qiushui Mountain to form a rural leisure center and develop leisure tourism. Today, the road connecting the fruit base and Qiushui Mountain has been completed, and a small-scale agritourism leisure site will be ready any day now.

"Once this rural leisure center officially goes into operation, my agricultural path will open onto a new world, and the local villagers will also find a new road to prosperity," Xu Lizhen said.