A look into the vegetable-growing life of farmer Xu Tingjie

    In Beiwan Group, Guanying Village, Mubo Town, Huan County, when people talk about farmer Xu Tingjie, the locals have made up this little saying about him: "Four people, three mu of land, seven vegetable sheds made money." With the government's support, he used his own 3 mu of contracted land to build sheds and grow vegetables, which not only enriched his whole family but also spurred on the whole group, making him a vegetable-growing specialist of some local renown.

Ten years ago, Xu Tingjie's family was very poor, sometimes having to buy oil, salt, soy sauce and vinegar on credit. Because they had little land, when drought hit, the grain they grew in a year was often not enough to feed them for that year. To make a living, he, frail as he was, worked at a nearby brick and tile factory. After a hard year, the money he earned could barely cover the family's minimum expenses. "Can this loess land really not support the people living on it?" Unwilling to accept poverty, he kept pondering this question.

In 1999, Mubo Town launched a greenhouse vegetable base construction project in Guanying and Gaozhaigou villages, and Xu Tingjie was one of the first farmers to build sheds and grow vegetables. He first contracted a solar greenhouse. Because the investment that year was high and it was also his first time growing vegetables with high technology, after the first year the greenhouse brought in only a little over 4,000 yuan. Although the income was not high, he gained some vegetable-growing skills from it. After that, his vegetable-growing experience grew richer year by year, and with strong government support, his planting scale gradually expanded.

By 2008, Xu Tingjie's family had 2 large sheds and 4 small sheds. Each large shed brought in about 10,000 yuan, and the income from the small sheds was no less than 4,000 yuan each. He and his wife could not handle all the work themselves, so they hired help at 40 yuan a day. At the end of the year, old Xu did the accounts: apart from the money spent on fertilizer, seeds, plastic film and hired labor, he had made a net profit of 31,000 yuan. In the latter part of 2008, after Xu Tingjie saw on TV the new technique of grafting watermelon seedlings onto pumpkin vines, he was tremendously excited. He humbly sought advice from the county's agricultural technician and started growing off-season pollution-free watermelons in his own greenhouse. By the time the watermelons reached the market, it was right around New Year's Day and Spring Festival. Every day customers crowded his vegetable shed full. The watermelons sold for 5 yuan per jin. After the Spring Festival, the first crop brought in more than 10,000 yuan, and the second crop brought in more than 4,000 yuan. Growing watermelons in greenhouses let Xu Tingjie taste real success.

This year, he learned that Feng Huaizhi of the same village was going away and had a greenhouse sitting idle, so he discussed it with Feng Huaizhi and agreed to rent it at the market price of 350 jin of wheat per mu per year, and he also had Feng Huaizhi's family members come to work in his own vegetable shed. At present, in his 3 large sheds, watermelons, tomatoes and cucumbers have all reached the market, and in the 4 small arched sheds, the lettuce is fresh and green, while the peppers and radishes are growing vigorously. As of the end of May, his melons and vegetables had already brought in gross income of more than 20,000 yuan, and by his estimate, by the end of the year the melons and vegetables will bring in 40,000 yuan. The land is still the same 3 mu, and the family is still the same 4 people, but the family's life now is no longer as tight as it used to be. The income per mu and the per capita net income are more than 10 times what they were before. Not only has he moved into a new house, he also has savings. Xu Tingjie said with emotion: "All of this is thanks to the government's support. The benefits of protected agriculture are just so high."