Neijiang University graduate returns home to start a business growing blood oranges, driving farmers to prosperity

Wang Zaisheng working on the farm

[Innovation and Entrepreneurship Stories]

Zizhong young man returns home after graduating from university to grow blood oranges, leading farmers to prosperity together

He is a post-80s university student who graduated in 2007. In the year he graduated, he found a stable job. However, not long after, he quit his job and returned to his hometown to grow blood oranges. Today, his blood oranges have reached scale, with an integrated automated fruit production line. In addition to offline sales, he has also built an e-commerce online sales platform, enabling the blood oranges produced to be sold to Beijing, **, Inner Mongolia and other places. In 2013, he also received the title of "Outstanding Individual in Employment and Entrepreneurship of the Whole City" in Neijiang. He is a microcosm of a large group of post-80s returnees who have started businesses back home. He is the owner of Yuquan Family Planting Farm in Zizhong County - Wang Zaisheng.

>>>>From "jumping out of the farm gate" to "jumping back into the farm gate"

Wang Zaisheng is a typical post-80s young man. He graduated from university in 2007. In the year he just graduated, Wang Zaisheng found a stable job, which for a university graduate like him was undoubtedly something very worth celebrating. However, half a year later, he suddenly received a phone call from his father back home. His father's meaning was to have him return to his hometown to grow fruit. Wang Zaisheng said his father's words undoubtedly surprised him greatly, because as a child of a farming family, he understood better than anyone the hope his parents had for him to jump out of the "farm gate," and now his father's idea was something he could not understand.

It turned out that Wang Zaisheng's father was a genuine farmer. Starting in 1998, he contracted 30 mu of land to grow blood oranges, and the family's income gradually increased, with living conditions continuously improving. However, as time passed, seeing the orchard he had built with his own hands have no one to inherit it, Wang Zaisheng's father felt heartache and loneliness, and so the idea of having his son return home to grow fruit arose. At this time, Wang Zaisheng thought of the hardships and difficulties of struggling away from home, and his monthly income of just over 3,000 yuan that barely covered living expenses. Thinking of his father's annual income of over 200,000 yuan and the gap with his own 30,000-plus yuan, he finally, after obtaining his wife's consent, decided to quit his job and once again "jump back into the farm gate" to return home and grow blood oranges.

Blood oranges grown by Wang Zaisheng

>>>>Blood orange production and sales reach scale, the fruits are sweet to the heart

Wang Zaisheng said that quitting his job and returning home was a new beginning for him. After returning home, he also thought about how to expand the scale of blood oranges even further on the basis of his father's work, to carry out large-scale planting. So not long after, after investigating many options, he contracted another 300 mu of land on top of his father's, developing large-scale planting and professionally engaging in the production technology development and product processing of Tarocco blood oranges.

In this process, on the one hand, he actively studied and absorbed knowledge to apply it; on the other hand, with the help of local agricultural technicians and his father, he finally developed the Tarocco blood oranges he planted and gradually got them on the right track. Now, after several years of effort, the blood orange base he created has developed into a professional cooperative with more than 200 member households, a planting area of more than 2,000 mu, driving and radiating more than 2,000 blood orange growing households, with an area of more than 10,000 mu.

However, such results did not stop Wang Zaisheng's steps forward. He then, with the help of the Zizhong County Communist Youth League Committee, applied for the Zizhong County Youth Entrepreneurship Microcredit Project, and used this project to further expand production scale. He built a new integrated automated fruit production line for washing, waxing, sorting and packaging, and built a new fresh blood orange storage warehouse with a storage capacity of 200,000 jin. At the same time, he built an e-commerce online sales platform, enabling the blood orange products grown and finely processed to be smoothly transported by full truckload or train container to Beijing, **, Inner Mongolia, Harbin and other provinces and cities.

>>>>Striding forward again, passing on the hope of "prosperity"

Growing blood oranges not only let Wang Zaisheng taste sweetness himself, but also brought gains to local farmers. Now, after several years of development, Wang Zaisheng's planting farm has continuously expanded in scale, and its development has got on the right track. In order to bring more technology and new guiding ideas to the cooperative, Wang Zaisheng has gone out many times to investigate business models and learn management experience. Nowadays, he has also planted more than 300 mu of watermelons on his farm, and focuses on growing them with "no pesticides sprayed on watermelons." This planting philosophy has also won his watermelons market favor. Now every weekend, many city residents come to Wang Zaisheng's farm for vacation and to pick watermelons, bringing new business opportunities and vitality to the farm. Wang Zaisheng also received the title of Neijiang "Outstanding Individual in Employment and Entrepreneurship of the Whole City" in 2013.

The small blood orange carries the hopes of the older generation, and it is also the hope passed down by his father. Now the blood orange also carries his own hope, the hope of the whole family, and the hope of all the cooperative farmers. Wang Zaisheng said he hopes that in the future he can run the farm well and let the wish for "prosperity" fall on every farmer, so that they can advance together with him on the road to "prosperity."