Silk industry in Sihong, Jiangsu drives 2,800 farming households to prosperity
From September 20 to 24, reporters visited dozens of village corners across 8 townships in Xigang. At this time of year, farmers are harvesting corn, fattening pigs, and growing mulberry trees to raise silkworms. They are clearly much more "cocky" than in previous years: agricultural products are not hard to sell, and incomes have increased greatly.
Behind the farmers' smiling faces is the support of leading enterprises. Leading domestic and foreign enterprises such as Guangdong Wens, Nanjing Weigang, Jiangsu Fu'an, Canada Aide Company, and Netherlands Rijk Zwaan Seed have successively settled in Xigang, forming regional specialty industry belts for watermelon, strawberry, dairy cattle, sericulture and more.
"A major enterprise is a locomotive; it changes technology, changes the market, changes concepts, and changes people's spirit and energy." Cai Dun'an, Party secretary of Shangtang Town, summed up the effect of this incoming capital as the "four changes."
Only responsible for raising, not for selling; cash lands in the pocket
[Scene One] "Raising pigs these past two years earned me 200,000, much better than going out to work!" On the 24th, in Fengshan Village, Fengshan Township, pig farmer Wang Lihong said loudly, pointing to the two pig sheds behind him. Near "lunch" time, several hundred pigs were lively and jumping about; as soon as they saw people carrying feed basins in, they crowded to the pen edges, wagging their tails and grunting.
Only responsible for raising, not for selling. Wang Lihong took out a loan of 50,000, saved 50,000 from 3 years of working away from home, received 40,000 from poverty alleviation funds, and borrowed another 60,000; with this 200,000, he built two pig sheds. In 2009, he joined hands with "Suqian Wens Animal Husbandry Co., Ltd.," which had just settled in Fengshan Township, to raise pigs. The couple's job is just to sweep the pens and feed the pigs; whether pig prices rise or fall has nothing to do with them, because under an agreement with the company, no matter how the market changes, every pig is guaranteed purchase and steady profit, earning at least 100 per pig.
Wang Lihong said that back then, planting a few mu of low-yield farmland earned only a few hundred yuan after a whole year of toil. Now it is different: his family's last batch alone sent 538 pigs to market, for a net profit of 70,000 to 80,000 yuan.
This ordinary farmer's pig-raising story let villagers who had been used to working away from home taste the benefits of "tying in with a major enterprise to earn big money," and they joined the "company + farmer" cooperation model one after another; this year another nearly 50 households expressed willingness to join. At present, in Xigang alone, Wens pig raising has 92 stable cooperative farmer households, with nearly 20,000 pigs on hand.
Selling straw beats selling corn
[Scene Two] At 8 a.m. on the 22nd, on Guandun Road in Shangtang Town, walking tractors were lined up for more than half a kilometer, and every trailer was piled with corn straw more than two meters high. The tractor drivers said cheerfully, "We're going to the cattle farm to sell it for money!"
The cattle farm the villagers mentioned is Weigang Modern Animal Husbandry (Sihong) Co., Ltd. in Shangtang Town. Liu Yonghua, a tractor driver from Group 1 of Guodun Village, was being weighed; one cartload of straw was 1,200 jin, and after weighing and unloading, he immediately received 180 yuan in cash. He said his family's 9 mu of land still had enough straw to deliver about ten more cartloads.
"One cow eats 60 kg of forage a day, and this year they will eat the corn straw from 3,000 mu of land." Ma Gaomin, manager of the dairy farm, excitedly told reporters that just a few days earlier, Holstein cow No. 05727 finally produced milk. The farm has now bred 630 dairy cows, and after entering lactation, each cow can produce 9 tons of milk per year.
In the past, growing corn depended on the heavens; if it rained during pollination, the kernels on the cob would be sparse, and one mu of corn would sell for less than 500 yuan. After the Weigang dairy cow project settled here, local people were pleasantly surprised to find that selling straw brought in more money than selling corn. Seeing this market, farmer broker Li Bi of Weiying Town started Huatai Forage Company last year; when wheat and corn reach seven-tenths maturity, he comes to collect straw and transport it to Nanjing Weigang for feed, covering 7 townships in Xigang and the surrounding Xuyi and Sixian in Anhui. At the purchasing point by the side of Weifeng Road, reporters saw two rubbing machines "chugging" as they swallowed straw, crushing it on site and fermenting it in place. This purchasing point sends out 4 truckloads a day and traffics 5,000 tons a year, while one mu of land's straw can sell for over 1,000 yuan.
A single strand of silk drives 2,800 households to prosperity
[Scene Three] Walking along the rural road in Wanggou Village, Chemen Township, one side is a stretch of mulberry fields, and on the other side, every household has a large single-story house along the road with the two big characters "Silkworm Room" written on it.
Village Party secretary Han Qi told reporters that the mulberry trees here used to be old varieties planted for more than ten years, and by this time they had long since run out of fresh mulberry leaves, so the people of Wanggou Village used to raise only one season of spring silkworms each year. Three years ago, with the county acting as matchmaker, Chemen Township formed a "in-law" relationship with Jiangsu Fu'an Cocoon and Silk Company. After Fu'an's technicians came from Dongtai to Chemen, the first thing they did was guide silkworm farmers in completely renewing the variety to "711." With fresh mulberry leaves guaranteed, silkworm farmers have now also begun raising late-autumn silkworms, and output has more than doubled.