A female university graduate becomes a "pig keeper": knowledge opens the road to prosperity
"Young post-80s generation, a city girl, graduated from Huazhong Agricultural University, served as production manager at the Jinshuizha Breeding Pig Farm under the Institute of Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Medicine of the Hubei Academy of Agricultural Sciences" - looking at such life "labels," who could have imagined that she would go into the countryside to become a "pig keeper"? She is Zhu Mingming, founder of the Minghui Livestock Breeding Farm in Xingan County.
In 2009, the pig farming market entered a trough, but Zhu Mingming saw a business opportunity in it, believing this was a good time to expand the scale of breeding to welcome the next wave of the market. By a stroke of luck, she happened to see that Xingan County was encouraging and supporting Xingan natives who had a specialized skill and a certain level of financial capacity to return home and start businesses, contributing to the local economic development and employment. Greatly encouraged, Zhu Mingming resolutely gave up the career she had built up in Wuhan for many years, moved her whole family back to Maixie Town, and opened up a pig breeding base at the Shuinan Orchard Farm in Xiaokeng Village of the town. Based on piglet breeding, she founded the Minghui Livestock Breeding Farm.
Zhu Mingming was originally a girl who dared to take risks. As early as 2007, she took the initiative to give up her government "rice bowl," resigned and went into business, running a veterinary medicine store in Hannan District, Wuhan, using the knowledge she had learned to solve problems for farmers, and won unanimous praise from nearby farmers. Then, she used her expertise to take over a pig farm that was on the verge of bankruptcy after suffering severe losses from a high fever disease, and quickly brought it "back to life." Having given up such a good foundation, now she once again relied on the knowledge she had learned to "open the road" anew and began the second startup of her life.
Every entrepreneurial endeavor is difficult. The road that must be taken to reach the pig farm is a mud road, muddy all year round, and on rainy days there is not even a place to set foot. Transporting things to the pig farm along such a road is strenuous even for young and strong male laborers, let alone young Zhu Mingming.
But Zhu Mingming was never frightened by difficulties. Giving pigs vaccinations, carrying feed, driving a tricycle to transport piglets and fattened pigs... she was up to all of it. Today, her farm has more than 200 sows in stock, sells more than 1,000 fattened pigs annually, supplies more than 3,000 high-quality piglets, and plans to expand the sow stock to 400 next year, supplying more than 6,500 piglets annually.
Zhu Mingming's knowledge was not only for her own use. Whenever farmers came to her door or called for help, she provided technical support and services to them without reservation, helping them achieve better economic returns. Upon learning that Maixie had a pig-raising "female Zhuge," many farmers came attracted by her fame to buy her piglets and seek her advice. Over the past few years, Zhu Mingming has established long-term cooperative relationships with more than 20 farming households, leading them together onto the road to prosperity.