Text/Hundred Craftsmen
Hundred Craftsmen Daji No. 489 New Craftsman Li Daode
Eight years of deep ploughing in the mountains
Obsessively stick to it for a lifetime
He was convinced
The best oranges
It must be its most authentic taste
01
The original heart of orange
"The first work of the west wind is very cool, and I like to see the new orange through the incense."
In December, Yizhang entered the early winter, walking into the Xiang Farm, in the dense woods, a full of navel oranges huddled together, bent the treetops, a wisp of fresh and seductive orange fragrance came to the nose, refreshing the spleen.
An old man wearing a straw hat and carrying a basket came from afar, still holding a pruning knife in his hand, and it was the owner of the farm, Li Daode.
In 1994, taking advantage of the boom of "Hong Kong businessmen going north", Li Daode came to Dongguan to open a plastic factory, seized the opportunity of industrial development at that time, with accurate insight into the market and flexible business acumen, Ten years later Li Daode has achieved success on the industrial road.
Perhaps after people have achieved fame, they will always begin to examine the present and think about the meaning of life, and Li Daode is no exception.
He often lamented: "Life is short, even if you are famous in the world, or rich enough to be an enemy of the country, what should you do?" After a hundred years, it is not only a handful of loess left. Why not turn a lifetime of experience or possession into a focused point to do something meaningful and not walk in the world in vain. ”
Once the seeds of dreams are planted, they will not be easily extinguished, and once they encounter the sun, they will always be awakened unconsciously.
In 2004, because of a walking fundraising activity of the "Long March for Education", Li Daode followed the group for 10 months, walked 8,038 kilometers, and built 14 hope schools for 101 counties in 10 provinces. It is also on this road that the seeds in the heart gradually take root and sprout.
"We crossed mountains, through forests, through endless plains." Li Daode's tone was full of infinite remembrance of the past, "At that time, I was thinking about what it would be like if these places were full of fruit trees. ”
This idea stirred in Li Daode's mind, and he couldn't wait to turn it into reality.
At that time, the domestic agricultural sector was more urgent than the industrial sector to improve quality. Especially with the food safety, soil pollution, agricultural products unsalable and other issues gradually exposed, criticized by the Chinese people, the domestic consumption structure is also quietly transforming.
Not to mention that there are hundreds of millions of middle-class people in China today, who are more concerned about the safety and quality of agricultural products. Even ordinary consumers have a more critical eye when facing the variety of vegetables, melons and fruits on the market. Just like in the past, when Hong Kong people heard that Chinese mainland imported, most of them avoided it. But on the farms in the interior, they must use more pesticides, use more additives, or have a poor sanitary environment?
"As long as someone is willing to step out, China's agricultural products can fully guarantee safety, and China's green agriculture has a future." Talking about the future of domestic agricultural products, this thin, nearly seventy-year-old man with a strong spirit and vigor exudes optimism and self-confidence everywhere.
But industry and agriculture are two completely "incompatible" fields. One has no experience, no one to help, coupled with many voices around him who are ridiculed and not optimistic, makes Li Daode's "agricultural blueprint" look so pale and weak.
It may be the pride of the young and successful, Li Daode is not willing to give up without doing anything, "Years of hard work experience has taught me that if you want to do a good job in an industry, it is not to see how much you know at the beginning, as long as you insist on learning and stick to the original intention, the result will not be too bad." ”
So this entrepreneur who used to wear suits and shoes on the mall and talk about management and planning in the blink of an eye put on a coarse cloth coat and a straw hat, and transformed into a farmer who worked for sunrise, rested at sunset, and buried his head in the mountains.
In 2010, Li Daode set out to build a large-scale green farm, Zhan Xiang Farm, which is not for profit, so that the crops and livestock products grown are pollution-free, ensuring human health, and protecting the natural ecology.
At present, the market is quite well received by the industry, and the "orange" brand navel orange, which only drives consumers to consciously spread by virtue of good word of mouth such as "delicious, safe and high quality", is produced here.
02
Deep ploughing of the mountains
Before I met Li Daode, in my cognition, planting an orange is fertilizing, pulling grass, watering and repelling insects, and it takes less than a year to harvest an orange.
Therefore, I can never imagine what kind of an orange can be worthy, 2 years of site selection, 8 years of deep ploughing, 10 years of years, hundreds of millions of yuan investment, dozens of planting methods... Such a "magnificent" cultivation process.
The unknown hardships behind this, in Li Daodeyun's light-hearted narrative, still stirred us up in awe of this elderly man.
People engaged in agriculture have a consensus that the planting industry is greatly affected by the weather, even with the support of modern science and technology, it is almost impossible to completely get rid of the situation of relying on the sky to eat. Therefore, site selection is particularly important.
In order to select the most suitable planting base, after Li Daode finalized the navel orange planting project, he began to travel to Jiangxi, Hunan, Guangxi, Yunnan, Guizhou and other provinces to conduct field investigation and site selection.
After tens of thousands of miles of visits, the integration and comparison of multiple data, and countless trial plantings, they finally finalized Yizhang in Chenzhou, Hunan Province, as the navel orange planting base, and this process alone took a full 2 years.
At that time, Yi Zhang, looking around, was a desolate mountain of dirt and stone piles, and according to the local villagers, "We have never been up in our lives, and there is no road." And far from the population, undeveloped, and just what Li Daode expected.
So open mountains, build roads, open water, electricity... All the measures began to be carried out intensively, the machine did not go up, then people carried it up, so it lasted for five years, covering an area of more than 20,000 acres of farms began to take shape.
"To do agriculture, we started completely from the 'white paper'. So, we've had a lot of difficulties, a lot of things. Without help, they continue to "pay tuition"; without experience, they continue to explore, summarize and improve. In order to choose the most suitable orange cultivation method, we conducted experiments with 140 different cultivation methods. Li Daode said that at the beginning, without the guidance of experts and technicians, he built a farm by books alone, and he had a helpless and proud smile on his face.
Compared with the business of enterprises, farming is obviously a monotonous, trivial, not dirty, not afraid of hardship, but also able to withstand the temperament of the work. For most of the day, Li Daode goes down to the ground to "talk" to oranges, understanding plant spacing, fertilization, sunshine, soil and water, which has been done for decades and has not been stopped.
Talking about the feelings of engaging in agricultural production for decades, Li Daode was quite excited: "Since I became a farmer, I have spent most of my work and life facing a piece of land, and I will unconsciously start from myself and then think about my relationship with the earth and the world. I found that when I started farming from an ecosystem perspective, I wanted to work with nature rather than from a war perspective. ”
With this inspiration, Li Daode created a 360° green ecological cycle system and put it into the operation of the entire farm. At the same time, the green and organic business model also means high-cost capital investment.
In order to improve the fertility of the soil, Li Daode searched for high-quality and additive-free fertilizer and could not, so he built a poultry base at his own expense, collected the manure of eight kinds of poultry such as chickens, ducks, cattle, donkeys, pigs and so on for fermentation; established the largest earthworm farm in China, and used The Earthworm No. 2 of Daping to turn the soil instead of the machine to loosen the soil to ensure the fluffiness of the soil. The two cooperate, strict procedures and standards, in order to provide long-term organic fertilizer for the land, so that orange seedlings can absorb green and natural nutrients to the greatest extent.
In order to ensure that the navel orange green is pure and natural, Li Daode insists on not spraying pesticides, not using insecticides, but using physical methods such as sticky fly boards and armyworm boards to ward off insect pests, and eliminating all the "assists" of all external factors such as cyclamate, ripening agents and chemical additives.
Li Daode personally helped us calculate an account, 200,000 fruit trees, each plant 3 stickworm boards, need 600,000 pieces, each 1 yuan, need 600,000 yuan, also need 600,000 ropes to tie, plus working hours, a night insect removal lamp needs more than 3,000, which is also the reason why oranges are more expensive than ordinary oranges on the market.
In the process of daily planting and maintenance, Li Daode also found that if the use of herbicides, not only will the quality of the land be destroyed, but also the quality of oranges will be damaged. Therefore, weeding the planting base with an area of 20,000 acres has become a problem that they must solve.
This work is rare in China, both in terms of workload and cumbersomeness.
"Then carry out manual weeding in a unified manner." Li Daode did not hesitate.
Therefore, the planting base organized a weeding team of more than 50 people to manually weed the entire park, and summarized the years of planting experience, in the way of "grass garden", the cut grass was directly covered under the orange tree, so as to achieve the purpose of keeping the soil warm and retaining water and allowing the oranges to absorb real healthy nutrients.
Every April, the orange blossoms bloom and the white flowers sway in the wind; then the petals fall and bear tender green fruits; the seasons change, the colors change, and when the sun feeds the fruits, the round and bright oranges hang on the branches.
"We witnessed and participated in this magical process, so we knew it was worth all the effort."
03
Help students to raise farmers
Pick an orange in the orchard, peel it with your hands, the fragrance is fragrant, take a bite, the flesh is tender and tender, full and juicy like drinking juice, thousands of plump fruit grains burst in an instant, the juice jumps out and soaks on the taste buds, like a small flower blooming, just the right sour and sweet into the throat, clear and appetizing, and a light fragrance is permeated between the lips and teeth.
Tested by authoritative institutions, the edible rate of "orange" navel oranges is as high as 85%, and the juice yield is more than 75%, which is 1.4-2.6 sweeter than ordinary oranges; the vitamin and mineral content contained in orange juice is higher than that of ordinary oranges, and it is also rich in protein, inorganic salt, crude fiber, calcium and other nutrients.
In 2017, the orange planting base won the "Gold Award of Chenzhou Agricultural Products Expo" in the first year of fruit production, and it was the first time to export to Hong Kong as a representative of Hunan high-quality navel oranges, and won the gold medal again in 2018 when participating in the Agricultural Expo. And by the relevant state departments tested, orange element has no pesticide residues, belongs to green safe food, in line with the national NY/T 426-2012 "green food citrus fruits" standard.
Over the years, Li Daode has always adhered to his original intention.
He founded the Zhan Xiang Scholarship Fund to help more than 400 college students with excellent academic qualities but poor families successfully complete their studies; he founded the Orange Zhuangyuan Planting Base, which provides more than 500 jobs for local farmers; and he donated the profits of the Orange Zhuangyuan Planting Base to a larger student aid foundation, bringing hope to more poor students to return to school.
Nowadays, many college students who have received financial support have chosen to return to work in the "orange" planting base after graduation.
"These kids, like me, like to come around the orchard when they're fine." Elder Li pointed to the other side of the orchard, where several young men in overalls were examining the branches and oranges in their hands.
There is his obsession and persistence, and there is his love and "orange".