Small mushrooms support farmers' dream of getting rich

After succeeding in business as migrant workers away from home, a young couple chose to return to their hometown to develop specialty farming and lead the local people along the path out of poverty to prosperity, which has become a much-told story locally. On October 28, the author went to Songlong Village, Yandian Town, Anlu City and met this couple.

Song Mingbing, 49 this year, is from Songlong Village, Yandian Town. Before marrying, he had ventured to Guangdong and Northeast China, and after marrying he stayed home farming. "In 2008, our elder son was in high school and our younger son was in middle school. Relying only on farming a few mu of land, the family lived in straitened circumstances." That year, Song Mingbing and his wife left their old home in Anlu and went to work at a private mushroom base in Baishazhou, Wuhan. The work was extremely hard and the daily pay was not high either, yet the couple still quietly kept working hard.

"There are so many mushroom bases in Baishazhou, Wuhan, and they are so large in scale, and there is no worry about sales. While working here, we should master the techniques at the same time, and later start our own mushroom-growing business just like others do." His wife's words suddenly enlightened Song Mingbing. From then on, the couple worked by day and at night wrote down in notebooks, one by one, the key technical points in the mushroom cultivation and production process.

In 2010, Song Mingbing began renting land in Baishazhou to "go it alone" growing mushrooms, embarking on the road of running his own business. After four years of hard work and living frugally, the couple had saved up a sum of funds.

During the 2015 Spring Festival, with the encouragement and support of the town and village leaders in his hometown, Song Mingbing decided to move the mushroom cultivation base back to his old home in Songlong. By the end of June, the mushroom base, with a total investment of nearly 200,000 yuan and covering nearly 10 mu, was successfully completed. The base has 5 greenhouses and a bagging scale of more than 50,000 sticks.

Hou Changxiu, who was picking mushrooms, said: "At present, more than 1,000 jin of fresh mushrooms can be picked here every day, mainly sold to major supermarkets and distributors, and consumers speak highly of the fresh mushrooms." Song Mingbing then said that all the raw materials needed for growing mushrooms are in the countryside, and now that transportation is convenient, delivering goods to the city takes only a drive of more than ten minutes. "The base also takes on more than 10 villagers as helpers. Working here, they can both look after their homes and earn money, achieving multiple benefits at once!"

Song Mingbing said he will further expand the scale, make the mushroom industry bigger, and lead more fellow villagers to grow mushrooms and get rich.