Xinzhai Town: High-Mountain Green Beans Become Farmers' "Wealth Beans"

    Output value of 5000 yuan per mu, with average income increase of over 10,000 yuan per household. Yeshantou Village in Xinzhai Town adapted to local conditions by developing off-season sales of high-mountain green beans, and the green beans from deep in the high mountains have become the local farmers' "wealth beans." 

    Yeshantou Village is located deep in the high mountains at an altitude of 750 m in Xinzhai Town, making it particularly suitable for growing high-mountain vegetables. For many years, under the leadership of the Party Committee and Government of Xinzhai Town, the village has made the most of its high-mountain advantages and actively guided farmers to trial-plant high-mountain pollution-free vegetables such as green beans and small chili peppers. Village Party Secretary Tao Chengzhen told reporters that the biggest feature of high-mountain vegetables is exploiting the seasonal gap: because of the climate, the vegetables mature late, with eggplants, pumpkins, green beans and tomatoes all ripening in July and August. At this time there are few vegetable varieties on the market, so high-mountain vegetables are much favored by the market and sell at high prices. The high-mountain green beans of Yeshantou Village are deeply favored by merchants from surrounding areas for being straight, green in color, good in taste and pollution-free. 

    "Green beans still growing on the high mountain today have already appeared tomorrow on the dining tables of residents in major cities in Zhejiang and even neighboring provinces," villagers told reporters vividly. After years of cultivation, the small high-mountain village of Yeshantou has become "somewhat famous" in the surrounding area, and the high-mountain green beans grown by villagers attract many merchants from nearby villages to come and snap them up. By growing high-mountain green beans, farmers deep in the mountains have tasted the sweetness of prosperity. According to Tao Chengzhen, Party Secretary of Yeshantou Village, growing high-mountain green beans is one of the villagers' main sources of income, and the village has a 10-year history of growing green beans. At first, villagers only planted them on a small scale, but later, seeing that the market for high-mountain green beans was good, the villagers who had tasted success expanded their planting scale year by year. Now the average household plants more than 2 mu of green beans. Last year, from high-mountain green beans alone, the average household income was over 10,000 yuan. 

    A reporter saw in Yeshantou Village that the hillsides and fields around the village were a lush scene, all filled with mature and soon-to-be-mature green beans. July and August are exactly the season when high-mountain green beans mature, and the villagers were busy picking green beans. A villager picking green beans in a field by the roadside told the reporter that these days, because it is the peak picking season for green beans, they get up at 4:30 every morning and are already picking in the fields by 5 o'clock, and sometimes a husband and wife have to pick all day long. At noon, vendors from surrounding villages and towns swarm in to snap up fresh high-mountain green beans. Some vendors who have long targeted the green bean market of Yeshantou Village generally find a farming household in the village to carry out fixed-point purchasing, letting the household collect green beans on their behalf in the village, and in the afternoon the purchased green beans are loaded onto trucks and transported to big-city markets. The next day, residents in major cities can buy fresh, crisp, pollution-free green beans from deep in the high mountains. 

    The growers of Yeshantou Village seized on the unique climate conditions to sow green beans in batches and pick the product by grade. The picking period for green beans spans as long as 3 months, adding a brand-new selling point for high-mountain green beans in terms of price and market channels. "The first batch of my family's green beans has already been picked for a week. This year we planted a total of 3 mu, and the second and third batches will gradually begin to be picked," said Tao Jinlin, a villager of Yeshantou Village, looking at the fields full of green beans with real delight. Tao Jinlin also did some calculations for the reporter: in their village, a well-performing farming household can produce more than 1000 jin of green beans per jin of seed, and at an average price of 1.2 yuan, the output value of one jin of seed reaches 1200 yuan.