How the Potato King Hou Xianxu Was Made

    In Guocun Town, when it comes to potatoes, one cannot help but mention Hou Xianxu. Hou Xianxu has mastered the techniques of potato cultivation, understands the market, and is good at marketing. The potatoes he grows have high yields, large sizes, and fetch high prices. The people of Guocun respectfully call him the "Potato King."

In early 1995, Hou Xianxu, a graduate of the Suiyang District Agricultural Broadcasting School, planted half a mu of potatoes with the help of Xiong Xiuchao, head of the Guocun Town Agricultural Technology Promotion Station. He harvested over 2,600 jin, a bumper crop. At that time, wheat was just over 4 mao per jin, with a yield of seven to eight hundred jin per mu. That year, potatoes were over 5 mao per jin, and the profit from one mu of potatoes was eight to nine times that of one mu of wheat. The impact of this profit effect was enormous -- from then on, the potato planting area in Guocun Town expanded year by year. By 2000, Guocun Town had become a major potato-planting town in our city, attracting potato buyers from Shanghai, Guangdong, Hubei, and other places to come for large-scale purchasing.

Speaking of this year's potato price drop, Hou Xianxu explained it fluently: "Potatoes are a vegetable and also a commodity, so price fluctuations are normal. In 2001, potato prices nationwide dropped dramatically just like this year, also to just over 3 mao per jin. At that time, it was mainly due to rising transportation costs. That year, truck overload inspections were fairly strict nationwide, and buyers' costs increased by over 40 percent, forcing them to lower potato purchase prices. This year's potato price drop is primarily because the financial crisis has affected potato exports. According to Guangdong buyers who came to purchase potatoes, in the first half of this year, our country's potato exports fell by nearly half. Secondly, in the first half of this year, many small and medium-sized enterprises in the south went bankrupt one after another, and millions of migrant workers lost their jobs and returned home, so demand for potatoes in the south also declined. Thus, with both external contraction and internal decline, the potato prices in Guocun Town also came down."

Facing the impact of the financial crisis on Guocun Town's potato industry, the town's Party committee and government responded actively, providing guidance and assistance to farmers in potato production and sales. From the beginning of this year to April, Guocun Town organized more than 200 members of the Suiyang District "Potato Association" to go to every village in the town to teach potato planting knowledge. In terms of sales, Guocun Town repeatedly organized the town's 50 potato sales brokers to contact buyers from other places through various channels such as telephone, mobile phone text messages, and the Internet, ensuring that potato growers would not worry about selling their potatoes.

Liu Zhongrun, Party secretary of Guocun Town, told reporters: "The potato industry in Guocun Town has grown into a mature industry that adapts to the market. Now, farmers interplant spring corn (or interplant peppers) in potato fields, plant cabbage after the corn harvest, and then plant spinach after the cabbage harvest -- thus growing four crops a year. This year, farmers in Guocun Town who grow potatoes can earn more than 2,000 yuan per mu, which is still about double the income from fields with 'wheat stubble followed by corn, corn stubble followed by wheat.'"