Chongqing Fengdu's Beef Cattle Industry Helps 70% of Farming Households Get Rich
Planting forage grass, making feed, raising fattened cattle, slaughtering and deep-processing beef cattle... For the 70,000 farming households in Fengdu County, Chongqing, engaged in beef cattle-related industries, every link in this beef cattle industry chain is a good path for them to increase income and get rich.
Finding a Pillar Industry
Beef cattle are the core pillar industry of Fengdu County. By the end of 2011, Fengdu County's beef cattle inventory reached 243,000 head, with 125,000 head slaughtered. Of the county's 186,000 farming households, nearly 50,000 were engaged in beef cattle-related industries, and by the end of 2012, this figure was to rise to 70,000 households. Fengdu County thus became the number one county for the beef cattle industry in Southwest China and a major beef cattle industry county nationwide. Yet just 4 years earlier, Fengdu's beef cattle industry was virtually nonexistent.
At that time, Fengdu County faced enormous difficulties, among which the emptiness of industry was particularly prominent. Especially after the completion of the Three Gorges resettlement and reconstruction, how to resettle migrants steadily and help farmers escape poverty and get rich was the biggest challenge facing this national-level poverty-stricken county.
"Fengdu County sits by the Yangtze River, so water is not a concern, and forage grass and straw resources are abundant. Smallholder cattle raising is fairly common, making it quite suitable for developing the beef cattle industry." At the end of 2008, Fengdu County set the goal of "accelerating the development of the beef cattle industry and building China's hometown of beef cattle."
Introducing Leading Enterprises: The Beef Cattle Industry Grows from Nothing
As the leading major player in Fengdu County's beef cattle industry, Chongqing Hengdu Agricultural Development Co., Ltd. has witnessed almost the entire journey of Fengdu's beef cattle industry from nothing to something, and from something to strength.
In February 2009, Beijing Zhongheng Xingye Technology Group and its subsidiary companies invested 180 million yuan to establish in Fengdu County a national-level agricultural industrialization leading enterprise integrating beef cattle breeding, fattening, forage grass planting, feed production, comprehensive beef cattle trading, slaughtering, deep processing and marketing, preparing to build "China's Southern Hometown of Beef Cattle," with an annual slaughter of 90,000 head of high-quality premium beef cattle.
Zhu Gangquan, deputy general manager of Hengdu Company, told this writer: "After the industrial company settled here, it directly drove the employment of more than 700 reservoir-area migrants and surrounding farming households." Farmers can find work at every stage, from planting forage grass to feed production to fattening cattle. For example, farmers who plant forage grass can "lease" their land to the industrial company, collecting rent while also returning to the land to "work for wages"; surplus family labor can work at nearby feed factories; cattle that the company cannot feed itself can be claimed by farming households to raise at home and then sold back to the company through order contracts, with prices negotiated collectively by cooperatives and the company responsible for "delivery" at that time. With this complete beef cattle income-boosting industry chain, more and more farmers in Fengdu County are returning home from migrant work.
In 2010, Fengdu farmer Qin Zongquan heard that his hometown was developing planting and breeding industries, so he ended his migrant working career, returned home and signed an agreement with Hengdu Agricultural Company, taking on a planting "order" of 100 mu of forage grass in one go. That year, Qin Zongquan's net income reached 115,000 yuan.
"Buy on Credit in Spring, Repay in Autumn" Helps the Beef Cattle Industry Take Root
"I can increase my income by more than 16,000 yuan a year just by adopting 8 beef cattle." For Cheng Peiguo, a farmer from the Second Cooperative of Wanglong Village, Jilong Town, Fengdu County, increasing income through raising beef cattle is something that requires almost no investment at all.
The reason Cheng Peiguo's beef cattle raising is described as income growth without investment goes back to the early days of Fengdu County's beef cattle industry development in 2008.
Fengdu County has a long tradition of raising yellow cattle, but how to get farmers to change their traditional breeding methods took a great deal of thought on the part of the relevant government departments in Fengdu County at the time.
"We implemented the beef cattle trusteeship model of 'buy cattle on credit in spring, settle the account in autumn and winter, return fat cattle for lean ones, return large cattle for small ones' and the cow adoption model of 'enterprise purchases cattle, farming households adopt them, calves are recovered, and cows belong to the household.'" said Wu Dongping, Party secretary of the Fengdu County Animal Husbandry Bureau. The "buy on credit in spring, repay in autumn" "zero-investment" model allowed farming households lacking startup capital to quickly join this enormous beef cattle industry chain. At present, about 90,000 people in Fengdu County are engaged in artificial forage planting and in collecting crop by-products such as straw and rice straw to support the beef cattle industry, while 150,000 people support the beef cattle industry by producing organic fertilizer, fruits and vegetables, and working in catering, logistics and other services. In the future, more and more people will join the beef cattle industry, and Fengdu's beef cattle industry has already taken deep root in this land.
Seventy Percent of Farming Households Get Rich Through the Beef Cattle Industry
In 2011, China's largest beef cattle trading center, with an annual trading volume of 200,000 head of beef cattle, was completed and put into use in Fengdu County. Here, in addition to traditional physical trading, what interests out-of-town merchants even more is the electronic platform online trading model. Through the internet and developed logistics, buying cattle from another location is just a matter of moving a mouse.
Modern trading methods are merely a catalyst boosting the development of Fengdu's beef cattle industry. Fengdu County's ultimate goal is to enable all 70,000 farming households in the county to get rich by extending the beef cattle industry chain.