Promoting scientific duck-farming techniques to help fellow villagers get rich
Right now, salted duck eggs, yolk pastries, yolk zongzi and yolk mooncakes are highly favored by the market, and in competition with many similar products they have become consumers' first choice. The sandy, oily, deeply savory salted duck egg yolk makes people unable to stop eating, but not every yolk is so delicious. In the view of Cao Xianlai, head of Wuwei County Fengyu Food Co., Ltd., which specializes in producing salted duck eggs, salted egg yolks and other series of products, "this is related not only to the curing process, but even more to the quality of the duck eggs."
"Generally speaking, chickens are raised in cages while ducks are raised free-range. In the past, ordinary farmers did not pay much attention to what the ducks ate or what to watch out for in raising ducks, as long as the ducks laid eggs." Cao Xianlai told reporters that in fact how ducks are raised has a bearing on the quality of the duck eggs.
Cao Xianlai is a native of Zhoulin Village, Xiang'an Town, Wuwei. In earlier years he did business in duck egg agricultural products with his brother in Zhengzhou, and it could be said to be thriving. As the business grew, he naturally had thoughts of expanding its scale, and thinking of giving back to his hometown and helping his fellow villagers get rich, he gave up the preferential investment conditions in the Zhengzhou industrial park and resolved to return to his hometown to develop. In 2007, Cao Xianlai newly established Wuwei County Fengyu Food Co., Ltd. in the Xiang'an Industrial Park, successively investing tens of millions of yuan, mainly producing vacuum-packed salted duck eggs, preserved eggs, salted egg yolks and egg yolks specially for Mid-Autumn mooncakes and other series of products.
To ensure the quality and quantity of duck eggs, Cao Xianlai also established his own laying-duck breeding base, raising 150,000 laying ducks a year and producing 25 million eggs. The registered "Mama Xiang" products are very popular in the market; in just the two festivals of Dragon Boat Festival and Mid-Autumn Festival, sales revenue reached more than 10 million yuan, and the total annual output value of breeding and processing exceeded 30 million yuan.
To help more fellow villagers get rich together, Cao Xianlai also established the Wuwei County Tianyu Livestock and Poultry Breeding Professional Cooperative, adopting the forms of "company + farmers" and "cooperative + members", and implementing for breeding farmers "unified supply of ducklings, unified provision of technical services, unified collection of feed, unified disease prevention and control, and unified organization of finished-product sales", encouraging surrounding people to raise local pollution-free egg-type shelducks. At present it has driven 150 households to join the ranks of laying-duck breeding, with more than 70,000 shelducks raised by both large and small households, spread throughout the Xiang'an, Quantang and Shushan areas. "At first quite a few farmers worried about where the duck eggs would be sold, so I signed repurchase agreements for duck eggs with them. Now the ducks they raise are good and the eggs are good, and even small traders and peddlers come to their doors to buy them."
Besides good sales channels, the related science and technology services that Cao Xianlai strives to promote have won widespread praise from local breeders. In recent years, in addition to the five-unified services, the Tianyu Livestock and Poultry Breeding Professional Cooperative has also vigorously carried out activities to bring technology, varieties and information into villages and households, established a mobile phone information release platform, and provided information and consulting services free of charge to member farmers, while using various forms to conduct training tailored to local conditions. To improve members' popular-science knowledge, the cooperative also regularly organizes breeding farmers to attend lectures at demonstration bases. Starting this year, the cooperative will also send 3 to 5 people each year to colleges and scientific research institutions for training, hoping to build a voluntary science and technology team for livestock and poultry breeding to solve major technical problems in breeding for local farmers.
According to statistics, through raising laying ducks, members of the Tianyu Livestock and Poultry Breeding Professional Cooperative increase their per capita income by 5,000 yuan each year, while for skilled breeders and demonstration households the annual breeding income reaches more than 100,000 yuan per household, with per capita income of about 20,000 yuan.