Brilliant Zhang Hao: reaping both popularity and career success

"Brilliant Scallion" is the brand name of Zhang Haozeng. One look and you know he sells scallions, and one look and it sticks in your memory. Choosing this name was truly brilliant!

Appearing in a Commercial Instant Fame

This rather clever Zhang Haozeng is even more striking for his popularity and the career luck that followed. He was the first Yilan scallion farmer to write a blog, and that blog was seen by director Wu Nien-jen, who took the initiative to ask him to shoot a commercial. Later, he and another scallion farmer, Lin Donghai, appeared together in a commercial for "Paolyta B Green Onion Edition."

This commercial made him instantly famous. He jokes, "Friends I hadn't seen in over ten years all showed up, even a creditor from the United States called!" It was a joke, but because the commercial could also be seen on the outlying islands, some of Zhang Haozeng's customers live on the outlying islands, and the shipping cost to send scallions there was even more expensive than the scallions themselves.

He only started learning to grow scallions from scratch at age 40. When he first came back, he was very impatient, feeling, "The harvest is so small, how can this be?!" As a novice farmer determined to plant in large quantities, he ended up with occupational injuries like "trigger finger" and "mommy thumb," and even had surgery for them. Even so, when settling accounts at year's end, he was shocked to find that most of the income had been earned by the pesticide shops and fertilizer shops.

This situation lasted 5 or 6 years, and only gradually improved after he upgraded his techniques and figured out his sales channels. Now he earns over 100,000 a month, has bought a house, and the scallions he grows have won the "Admiral Star" award of Sanxing, Yilan, making him feel that this big turn in life actually turned out pretty well!

Experimental Cooperation with the Agricultural Improvement Station Increasing Professional Knowledge

Zhang Haozeng, who currently serves as the leader of the sixth vegetable production and marketing group of Sanxing Township, has growing expertise in cultivation, because he has carried out quite a few experimental collaborations with the Hualien District Agricultural Improvement Station, through which he has also increased a great deal of professional knowledge. These collaborations include rational fertilization, rhizobia, phosphate-solubilizing bacteria experiments, setting up a weather observation station in the scallion fields, a knowledge integration platform for high-quality scallion production, and an organic edamame experimental vegetable garden.

As someone who loves writing a blog, he also recorded the insights from these experiments one by one. For example, after trial-planting organic edamame, he wrote: "The 'organic edamame' trial-planted by the Hualien Agricultural Improvement Station, after more than 80 days of growth, finally bore abundant fruit. Look at those plump pods, so full of green, each curved pod like a different 'smile curve.'"

And about setting up the "weather observation station" in the field, he wrote: "Watching each round of scallions from planting to harvest, as the seasons change, the values of temperature, sunlight, rainfall and soil also change. The two years of observation and recording show just how much time and manpower went into gathering this integrated knowledge. This is exactly the meaning of what is called 'one generation plants the trees, the next enjoys the shade'!"

Microbial Fertilizer Is Super Useful

Among so many experimental collaborations, what impressed Zhang Haozeng most was the "rhizobia and phosphate-solubilizing bacteria experiment." The Agricultural Improvement Station applied the microorganisms "rhizobia" and "phosphate-solubilizing bacteria" to increase soil fertility while also promoting plant growth. After the first experiment, Zhang Haozeng immediately discovered that not only were the scallions grown more beautiful than with conventional methods, but fertilizer use was also two applications fewer than conventional methods. You could say fertilizer decreased while yield increased, and he could not help but marvel, "This really is a major breakthrough for the scallion industry!"

He believes that cooperating with the Agricultural Improvement Station on experiments is really great, because "all sorts of knowledge you didn't know before comes out." Zhang Haozeng describes himself as someone who does not like studying, but when doing these experiments, he would keep records along the way, and the information recorded was actually applied in the scallion fields. "The benefits are huge, not just good for me; even all the group members benefited."

Brilliant Zhang Haozeng made several clever decisions on his life journey, and they also made his career smoother and smoother. At present he is using his "brilliance" to try growing some high-economic-value crops, hoping to open up a new world beyond scallions.

Name: Zhang Haozeng

Business Item: Scallions

Contact Address: No. 26, Guilin Road, Guilin Village, Sanxing Township, Yilan County

Phone: 0972-111809

Class: 100th Academic Year Advanced Organic Agriculture Class