Tech-driven Farming Leads to Wealth: The Story of Goose Farming Tycoon Li Yongke

    Goose farmingcosts are high, risks are great, and scalegoose farmingFew farmers take it up. But one farmer in Shangsi County, relying on solid skills, raises over a thousand geese a year, becoming the county's well-known goose farming tycoon.  

    He is Li Yongke, a major goose farmer in Kongtuo Tun, Changdun Village, Siyang Town. On August 27, this writer rushed to Kongtuo Tun and learned about Li Yongke's story of growing rich through goose farming.  

    In 2004, after on-site investigation and study, Li Yongke set his sights on farming, a venture with very promising prospects. He exchanged his own farmland with others, and through various means raised a huge sum of 200,000 yuan to dam three small rivers across the middle, creating a large-scale farming operation; the reservoir in the farm has over 50 mu of usable water surface.  

    At the start of the venture, with no technology, no experience and no connections, Li Yongke's first batch of geese suffered a catastrophic loss. Goslings that had grown to over 1 jin mysteriously fell ill and died in large numbers; of 1,000 geese, 700 died. At that time, when the villagers saw him dumping dead geese by the basketful, they all thought Li Yongke was finished. The huge setback made Li Yongke realize the importance of science and technology. In 2003, he steeled himself and bought a computer, and began gathering advanced farming techniques and experience online. In 2004, he also paid his own way to Hubei to study for a month, and subscribed to science and technology newspapers and magazines to learn more advanced and systematic farming knowledge.  

    Extensive learning enabled Li Yongke to gradually master solid farming skills. He began a "goose - duck - pig - fish" integrated farming model, and his poultry and livestock operation gradually reached scale, with each batch of geese reaching 600 to 800 birds, and both the survival rate and the quality of the adult geese guaranteed. In 2005, the lion-head geese he raised were all bought up by a company in Hepu, which processed and exported the goose liver to countries in Southeast Asia. This year, on the Ghost Festival on the 14th day of the 7th lunar month (August 26 on the solar calendar), Li Yongke's 600 adult geese were all ordered by a boss from Nanning without ever going to market for retail sale.  

    Having found the road to wealth, Li Yongke did not keep his technical secrets to himself; instead, he unreservedly shared his farming experience with the farmers who came to learn from him, spurring farming in nearby villages and hamlets. For this, he himself was recognized by the county's Science and Technology Bureau with the title of goose farming "Science and Technology Demonstration Household." At present, Li Yongke's farming base has applied for designation as a "Guangxi Rural Science and Technology Service System Development Demonstration Unit."