Yan Yingzhu of Yuzhong forges a path to prosperity

"I've been growing plateau summer vegetables for nearly ten years now. It's harder work than before, but life at home has changed beyond recognition. We've built a new house and bought a solar water heater, a refrigerator, and a fully smart washing machine. In the past, I wouldn't have dared even to dream of this..." On September 29, Yan Yingzhu, a villager from Group 6 of Gaodunying Village, Sanjiaocheng Township, Yuzhong County, was busy harvesting vegetables in the field. The sweat on her face could not hide her inner joy as she spoke with emotion.

Yan Yingzhu is an ordinary villager of Gaodunying Village. Speaking of life in the past, she said frankly: "Ten years ago, we planted a bit of wheat and corn in the field, and after a whole year we couldn't earn much money. Life at home was tight. But ever since we started growing vegetables, things have been different. From 2 mu at the beginning to 8 mu now, once we tasted the sweetness of it, life got better and better!" From an annual income of less than 10,000 yuan at the start to a household annual income of nearly 100,000 yuan now, she is a typical example of the tens of millions of farmers in Yuzhong County who have become prosperous through vegetable cultivation.

Yan Yingzhu has become prosperous, and Gaodunying Village has become prosperous too. Walking along the broad main road of Gaodunying Village, vehicles transporting vegetables flow endlessly, and villagers carrying vegetables to sell come and go. Today, in Gaodunying Village, this major "plateau summer vegetables" growing village, more than 98% of farmers have embarked on the road to shaking off poverty and becoming better off through growing vegetables. The villagers sigh with feeling: "Plateau summer vegetables have changed our village!"

Data from the Yuzhong County Agriculture Bureau shows that this year Yuzhong launched an industry-based prosperity action with the "vegetable industry" as the core of increasing farmers' incomes. In 2015, the county's plateau summer vegetable planting area reached 360,000 mu, with total output of 860,000 tons and an output value exceeding 1.35 billion yuan. The county has 40 vegetable enterprises, with total storage capacity of 130,000 tons and annual outbound vegetable sales of 1.2 million tons. It has already formed the province's largest production-area vegetable distribution center for "northern vegetables shipped south and western vegetables shipped east," with 90% of products sold to southeastern coastal cities such as Guangdong, Fujian and Zhejiang, and 10% of vegetable products already exported to countries such as Japan, Malaysia and Singapore as well as China's Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan regions.

While making the plateau summer vegetable brand bigger and stronger, relying on the special geographical and climatic conditions of the southern mountainous areas, Yuzhong County has vigorously developed cold-cool-type vegetable cultivation and built two 1,000-mu cold-cool-type vegetable standard gardens in Qijiahe and Yangshang. The planting scale has grown from the initial 85 mu to more than 50,000 mu today, and economic income has climbed from 600 yuan per mu on irrigated land to 5,000 yuan per mu, and on dry mountain land from 300 yuan per mu to 5,000 yuan per mu.

Cold-cool-type vegetable cultivation has rewritten the history of Yuzhong County's semi-humid and semi-arid dry farming areas being unable to grow vegetables, explored a path of leapfrog development for vegetable cultivation in semi-humid and semi-arid dry farming areas, and significantly increased the agricultural economic benefits of the region.