The Great Northwest, in the hearts of most people, is drought, desert, wind and sand. Once upon a time, it was indeed sand that was receding, and people tried their best to plant trees and replenish greenery, but a major drought would easily ruin several years of hard work.
Qingshan Farm is a typical example, although it is called "Qingshan", but there is no Qingshan, young people have gone out to work, leaving most of the old people who have deep feelings for here, they have been fighting with the desert for decades, the effect of sand control and sand fixation is not ideal, until a young man introduced a "special" pumpkin, and finally made the appearance of Qingshan Farm look new.
Qingshan Farm: It was also lively and brilliant
Yongchang County, Jinchang City, Gansu Province, is located in the middle of the Hexi Corridor under the Qilian Mountains, once, this was Liangzhou, which was a major place for the nomadic peoples in the northwest and the Central Plains Dynasty, and in Chinese history, the dynasties that mastered the Hexi Corridor were more prosperous and powerful.
In 1958, in order to solve the problem of rations for the People's Liberation Army entering Tibet, the state-owned Bayi Farm in Gansu Province was built here, and a large number of PLA cadres were transferred to participate in production and construction.
Judging from the current situation, Qingshan Farm is located at the junction of desert and oasis, it is very close to the Danjulingian Desert and the Dutengger Desert, and Qingshan Farm is struggling to survive in the "gap" between the two deserts.
To some extent, the Qingshan farmers have been fighting the desert from the very beginning and asking for production from the desert, but now, there are only more than 20 elderly people on the farm, who are the last "guardians" of the once glorious farm.
Li Weihong's father is probably the first generation of builders of Qingshan Farm, a man with ear diseases who usually speaks little and buries his head in the farm to open up the wasteland.
Six years after the establishment of Qingshan Farm , in 1964 — Li Weihong was born, born and raised on a farm, and Qingshan Farm is his hometown that he cannot leave.
In the past, the desert was not so close to the farm, and the farm at that time was not so "deserted". When Li Weihong was a child, soldiers, farmers, and intellectuals from all over the country worked feverishly on farms, where large tracts of crops were spread out and full of life, and people with different accents and backgrounds had the same goal: to build the Great Northwest.
Li Weihong recalled that the farm once set off a vigorous tree planting campaign, in response to the call of the state, but also in order to resist the invasion of the desert, people dug pits in the hard sand and gravel ground of the Gobi Desert, filled in the soil, and then planted saplings into it, carefully caring for the growth of saplings.
The process is difficult because the local evaporation far exceeds the amount of precipitation, the ecological environment is very fragile, planting a sapling may take 5 years, but as long as there is a year of drought, the effort to plant trees will be abandoned.
But people are still working feverishly, going to the tree planting place every year to pull out the saplings that have dried up and died, and replanting new saplings, hoping that one day the "Qingshan" of Qingshan Farm can be planted.
Moreover, in the farm, people used to live next to each other, in their free time always like to visit each other, share the parents short, although the conditions here are difficult, but for the people on the farm, life can also be regarded as "carefree".
But with the passage of time, the glory of the farm gradually faded, people began to run to the city, to modern life, Qingshan Farm is being forgotten.
The old man left behind: insist on fighting the desert
For Li Weihong, it is not so much that people are leaving the farm as that the farm is leaving him. With the development of the times, young people have left the farm to go to the "outside world" to study, work, and pursue a better life.
Li Weihong's son Li Fei is the same, for the choice of his son, Li Weihong has no opinion, and even like other old people, encourage young people to go out to work, but for him, the farm is home, the outside life is colorful, but he does not want to leave this home.
Li Weihong and the other 20 elderly people stood here together, in front of the dots of green, behind which were the houses that were in ruins. Li Weihong said that as more and more people move away from the farm, there are more and more empty houses, people live farther and farther away from each other, and they rarely visit each other again.
Although the farm is now also connected to electricity and uses electric lights, the lights on the farm at night are becoming more and more sparse.
In the 21st century, the state farm has long become Gansu Nongken Yongchang Farm Co., Ltd., and the enterprises that have lost money for many years have also begun to strive to "save themselves", but occasionally recruit graduates from agricultural universities to work here, they will always feel that the environment is harsh, the wages are not high, they will leave for a few months, there are very few people who can stay, and the self-help of the enterprise has fallen into a bottleneck.
At the same time, the desert is also constantly invading the south at a rate of three to four meters per year, and when the spring wind rises, the yellow sand covers the sky and the visibility is only a few meters.
Although the old people have been insisting on planting trees and fighting with the desert, the actual occupants of the entire Qingshan Farm are less than 230 people, and Li Weihong's company is only 12 households left, in the face of natural erosion, the old people began to realize that when they are "retired" and cannot move, there will be no one to plant anymore, and the farm will completely disappear.
In order to save their homeland, the old people have also thought about continuing to plant corn and wheat, but the natural conditions here determine that crops are difficult to survive, the production cost of crops on Qingshan Farm is very high, after the end of the era of unified purchase and marketing, Qingshan Farm corn and wheat are not competitive at all, and many farmers are "losing money to plant land".
Li Weihong said that here "what to plant, what to lose", there are companies insisting on farming, but they have lost money for 4 consecutive years, and finally they have to "give up." Moreover, even if the harvest is good, the corn that has been planted hard for a year can only sell for one or two thousand yuan, and over time, the farmers are not willing to plant the land anymore, and a large amount of land is idle, making the southern invasion of the desert more "convenient".
They thought that maybe Qingshan Farm would eventually become a historical term, and their homeland would eventually become a desert.
Fortunately, Li Weihong's son Li Fei brought new hope to the place.
Babe Pumpkin: The Farm's "Great Killer"
Li Feisheng is at Qingshan Farm, and like most young people on the farm, he was admitted to college, left the farm, and has been working in the field.
Every time he went home to visit his family, Li Fei always felt regret and heartache when he saw the increasingly dilapidated farm, but he never found any good way out to save the farm until he came into contact with Babe pumpkin.
Babe pumpkin is a small pumpkin native to Japan, usually only the size of an adult's palm, and tastes like a pumpkin, but on the texture it looks like a chestnut, and the powder is sticky.
After this pumpkin was introduced into The country, the Academy of Agricultural Sciences improved it, so the domestic Babe pumpkin is very suitable for planting in the sandy land area, and has a good effect of windproof and sand fixation.
Initially, the Minqin area near Qingshan Farm was the "pilot area" chosen by the Academy of Agricultural Sciences, but although the effect of Beibei pumpkin to prevent wind and fix sand is very good, the sales channel is not good.
On the one hand, the "popularity" of Babe pumpkin in China is not high, and the people do not even know how to eat this vegetable; on the other hand, it is because the farmers' sales channels are very single, and they do not know how to sell, even if there are good things, it is difficult to sell.
At this time, Li Fei came into contact with The Babe pumpkin, and he felt that this crop was very suitable for planting in Qingshan Farm, and perhaps it could become the "way out" of Qingshan Farm.
However, to start growing babe pumpkins, we must first solve the problem of sales. Li Fei decided to try to sell Minqin's Babe pumpkin first, and if successful, replicate this "successful experience" at Qingshan Farm.
Li Fei, who has a deep understanding of the Internet, first thought of e-commerce sales, and he contacted Yang Jiaxin, who is doing e-commerce in Hangzhou, hoping to cooperate with him to sell Minqin's Beibei pumpkin to the whole country.
When Yang Jiaxin saw farmers in the Minqin area grabbing pumpkins in the sandstorm and afraid that the pumpkins would be damaged by sand and gravel, he thought that he should do something for Minqin.
The two hit it off and decided to start trying to sell Babe pumpkins. In order to open up sales channels, Yang Jiaxin positioned Babe pumpkin as a "convenient" food of "5-minute fast food in the office" and "delicious and healthy" for the eating habits of young people, and this publicity was indeed effective and quickly attracted the attention of young white-collar workers.
Coupled with Yang Jiaxin and Li Fei taking the "price route", soon opened the market, in a sales activity in 2016, the two sold 43,800 boxes in 3 days, breaking the sales record of vegetables on the e-commerce platform, and in 2017, Beibei pumpkin was even more popular, with sales reaching 388,000 boxes.
This gave Li Fei great confidence, so he took the Babe pumpkin back to Qingshan Farm and asked his father and neighbors to plant "Babe Pumpkin" instead.
Moreover, in order to ensure the quality of pumpkins, Li Fei also specially went to the Gansu Academy of Agricultural Sciences for advice, and improved the varieties of Babe pumpkins with the help of experts.
Li Weihong is half-convinced about "e-commerce sales", and it is difficult for him to imagine that he can sell pumpkins with "a few clicks" on the computer.
However, Li Weihong knows how to farm, he knows that the water demand for Babe pumpkin is small, and the temperature difference between day and night in Qingshan Farm is large, which is suitable for the growth of pumpkins. After listening to his son talk about their success in Minqin, Li Weihong decided to "use a dead horse as a living horse doctor" and planted a babe pumpkin.
After all, in Qingshan Farm, there are not many things they can grow, planting corn and wheat is a loss, and planting pumpkins is also a loss, but if it is successful, Qingshan Farm will open a beautiful future.
In 2018, Li Weihong tried to plant Beibei pumpkin for the first time, he did not dare to multiply, only called relatives and friends to plant 500 acres of pumpkins together - in Qingshan Farm, the most likely is the land.
Babe pumpkins soon thrived on Qingshan Farm, and the 500 acres of "green" made Qingshan Farm seem to have a little bit of the scenery of the past, but the worries of the elderly were still there. Li Weihong's father, who is in his 80s, is worried that his grandson will not be able to sell the pumpkin smoothly this time.
Soon, Li Fei used sales to reassure everyone at Qingshan Farm: the pumpkins harvested that year were sold out in less than 50 days.
Seeing this result, the hesitant farmers immediately decided to join the ranks of planting Babe pumpkins, and now they have planted 2450 acres of pumpkins on the farm, the farm is covered with green again, and the original hot Qingshan Farm seems to be back.
This time, Li Fei also organized everyone to jointly implement "standardized" and large-scale planting and production, which improved the quality of Babe pumpkins, and also reduced the after-sales problems of pumpkins, making Beibei pumpkins in Qingshan Farm more popular.
The data shows that Li Fei's Beibei pumpkin mu income has reached 10,000 yuan.
Walk on the field of hope
Seeing the success of The Babe pumpkin, Li Weihong is very happy, the farmer is also very happy, Qingshan Farm has not been so busy for many years, and now relying on network sales, they not only have to pay attention to the growth of pumpkins every day, but also have to pack, ship, receive buyers from all over the country, busy.
The increase in sales has also brought a better life and more development opportunities to the people of Qingshan Farm, and now Qingshan Farm is once again walking on the "field of hope".
Li Fei quit his job in the city and stayed on the farm to become a "new professional farmer", because the vast agriculture is promising and the new professional farmers have unlimited business opportunities.
This has also led many young people to return to their hometowns, changing the situation that there were no young farmers on the land in the past, and injecting new vitality into the development of Qingshan Farm.
Media reports show that driven by Young People such as Li Fei, not only the appearance of Qingshan Farm has changed, but the entire Gansu Nongken Yongchang Farm has ushered in a new vitality: the company's revenue income is 158 million yuan, profit is 5.11 million yuan, and various indicators are rising year by year.
Yongchang Farm, which turned a loss into a profit, also continued to increase investment, improve farming conditions and local infrastructure, boost the transformation of characteristic industries, and further promote the development of the farm economy.
In 2022, Yongchang Farm completely broke the previous model of family farms organizing production by themselves and comprehensively implemented a new model of modern agriculture.
Under the unified organization of the farm, the division of labor and cooperation among various departments, unified cultivation management, unified formula fertilization, unified prevention and control of pests and diseases, and unified provision of technical services have improved the quality of crops on the farm, and the labor intensity of farmers has been greatly reduced.
The efficiency of the enterprise has risen, and the ability to resist risks has also been enhanced. Yongchang Farm has also built 8 new high-level ponds to ensure the farm's water supply.
Media reports show that during the flood season, the pool can store more than 1.6 million cubic meters of water, equivalent to a small reservoir, in case of drought, you can ensure the water of crops through drip irrigation and infiltration, reducing the impact of drought on crops.
With the efforts of all parties, the whole farm became lively again, and everyone worked together to work the Gobi Desert in the great northwest, not only to plant the land well, but also to cure the sand, truly realize the people entering the sand and retreating, and plant the Qingshan of the Qingshan Farm little by little.