A Look Into the Pig-Farming Life of Liu Hanhu
His name is Liu Hanhu, a farmer in Xingguang Village, Jianhua Township. Since the reform and opening up, inspired by the Party's policies for enriching the people, he has walked the road to prosperity with his own hard-working hands, and has achieved success in developing breeding-pig production. In 2002 he sold 500 breeding pigs and 600 commercial pigs, earning an annual net profit of 350,000 yuan and living a moderately prosperous life.?
He began small-scale breeding-pig farming in 1993. Through several years of pig-farming experience, he mastered a certain amount of farming technology, accumulated some experience and achieved a certain level of economic benefit. But with the development of the market economy, he increasingly felt that his farming technology and farming scale could not keep up with the situation, so he resolved to work hard on farming scale, technology, breeds and information to raise his feeding level and speed up his pace toward prosperity. First, he raised funds to increase infrastructure construction and expand the farming scale. In 1997, by borrowing money from relatives and friends and taking out loans from the township credit cooperative, he raised more than 500,000 yuan, and the village also helped him secure 4,500 sq m of land for breeding-pig housing; on the original basis he built two more modern pig houses, expanding his breeding-pig farming scale from the original 200 head on hand to more than 500 head today. Second, he focused on introducing new breeds and raising the technological content. Over several years he successively introduced quality breeding-pig breeds such as British Yorkshire, American Duroc, Hampshire, Dekalb, Belgian Landrace, double-muscled, Canadian Pietrain and Kuangbei, and has now reached 12 breeds. Third, he worked hard to learn technology and constantly improve his farming level. To improve his pig-farming level, he bought a large number of books on pig farming, studied and pondered them on his own, and at the same time attended various training classes and hired experts as technical advisers, so that the survival rate of the pigs and the rate of epidemic disease prevention and control were both markedly improved and enhanced. Fourth, he grasped information well to promote pig-farming production and sales. With the development of information and China's accession to the WTO, learning to use market information to organize production and avoid risks has become especially important. So he subscribed at his own expense to magazines and newspapers on pig farming, carefully listened to and watched radio and television information on breeding-pig feeding, technology, supply and demand, and also went online through the village computer to capture all kinds of farming technology and market information at the first opportunity, to understand the market trends and the latest supply and demand situation for pigs, and to develop breeding-pig production according to changes in market supply and demand and consumer demand. Because his information was well-informed and his grasp of the market accurate, his sales channels were very good and the benefits especially considerable.?
Though he is rich now, he has not forgotten his fellow villagers, and regards leading them to prosperity together as his own duty, becoming a capable and warm-hearted man in their eyes. At present, he has provided 15 piglets free of charge to 3 poor households, given 12,000 yuan in financial support, and personally visited pig farmers' homes to give technical guidance and provide feed formulas free of charge, which both improved pig farmers' capacity for scientific farming and strengthened their confidence in relying on science and developing specialty farming to prosper. With his support and help, 35 farming households in the whole village now raise pigs, with an annual slaughter of 1,820 head, a net profit of 1.3 million yuan and a per capita income increase of 1,000 yuan.