The locust farming story of farmer Fang Cheng
Wheat, corn and ryegrass are planted in the greenhouse, not for harvest, but as feed for locusts. In Xiaba Village, Jiangbei Town, Jiangyang District, Luzhou City, female college graduate "village official" Fang Cheng said: "I want to make locusts a new favorite for farmers here, and help the villagers get rich by farming locusts."
Fang Cheng, 24 this year, graduated from Sichuan University of Arts and Science in 2007 and came to Xuchang Central School in Haichao Town, Luxian County to serve as a teacher. Through a period of contact with farmers, she saw their distress at having no way to get rich. It was also from this time that Fang Cheng conceived the idea of helping local farmers get rich.
After that, she began consciously searching online for relevant information on getting rich. One day in June 2008, while searching for information online, Fang Cheng was suddenly drawn to a piece of news: a farmhouse restaurant in Chengdu was breeding and selling locusts itself, selling them at 80-160 yuan per kilogram on the market, with demand exceeding supply. Although locusts are pests of crops, because of their high nutritional value and rich medicinal value, they are attracting more and more attention.
In September of that year, Fang Cheng moved from Xuchang Central School in Haichao Town, Luxian County to Xiaba Village, Jiangbei Town, Jiangyang District to become an assistant to the village director. Fang Cheng conducted an on-site inspection of a locust farm in Shuangliu, Chengdu, and reached an agreement on purchasing breeding stock and related technical assistance. Fang Cheng mobilized several households in the village with an entrepreneurial spirit to raise them, and she would be responsible for the related breeding technology. In March 2009, with her family's help, Fang Cheng invested nearly 10,000 yuan to build 3 locust breeding greenhouses, and bought back gauze netting and 150,000 locust eggs and locust kings from Chengdu for breeding and raising. By mid-June, after more than 50 days of careful raising, the locusts had entered maturity. Fang Cheng roughly estimated that her first batch of 3 greenhouses held at least more than 40,000 locusts, and at current market prices, she would earn at least tens of thousands of yuan. She used all these more than 40,000 adult locusts to lay eggs and breed larvae, and only when the second batch of locusts matured in mid-August would she sell them on the market.
Although the second batch of locusts would not be officially available for people to taste until mid-August, several star-rated hotels and more than 10 restaurants in Luzhou had already shown strong interest.
"My 'locust ideal' will surely become an industry that drives the villagers in this area to get rich." Fang Cheng is full of confidence in her "locust ideal".