When the lychees in the root tribute garden of Baiqiao Village are ripe, the fresh fruits hang on the branches. Photo by Qiu Lihe/Guangming Pictures
When the Xinyi Yinfei plum is ripe, the fruit farmers are busy harvesting. Photo by Wang Qingzhen/Guangming Pictures
It is located in the Litchi Modern Agricultural Industrial Park in Genzi Town, Gaozhou City. Photo by Wu Hao/Guangming Pictures
On April 11, 2023, General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out during his inspection and investigation in Baiqiao Village, Genzi Town, Gaozhou City, Maoming City, Guangdong, "This is the hometown of lychee, lychee planting has historical heritage and cultural heritage, distinctive characteristics, obvious advantages, and broad market space”。
"300 lychees a day, no matter how long you are a Lingnan person", "The fruit is called a different product, and the color and taste are not in the world", "The crystal is sweeter than honey, and the mouth is full of fragrant jade dew"...... In ancient times, the delicacies that countless literati and artists praised are now becoming a characteristic industry for the benefit of the people of Lingnan!
Walking in the Genzi Gong Garden in Baiqiao Village, Genzi Town, Gaozhou City, Maoming City, Guangdong, when the research team was lamenting the strong vitality of these ancient lili trees with majestic branches, pavilions and different shapes, He Shuzhi, a cadre of Baiqiao Village, came to this ancient lili garden to "patrol" as usual.
"Now is the flowering period, we need to gradually apply phosphorus and potassium fertilizer to facilitate flower bud differentiation and improve fruit set. As an "old friend" and guardian of the ancient Lishu, it has become He Shuzhi's habit of "not quitting" to go to the Tribute Garden every day. "I grew up 'watching' from Gongyuan, these ancient trees are my family, and each one is very precious. At the end of March, the sunshine in South China was warm enough, and the dense leaves sprinkled on He Shuzhi's face, illuminating his already resolute eyes more and more clearly, and the persistence of the Lixiang people more and more clearly.
Maoming is known as the hometown of lychees, with a history of more than 2,300 years of lychee cultivation. Tang's "Beihu Lu" recorded: "The beauty of southern fruits has lychees...... Its high pan is the best. Gaozhou and Panzhou are now Maoming, which are rich in "Lizhong Jiaguo". The planting area of lychees in Maoming is stable at about 1.4 million mu all year round, and one out of every five lychees in the world is produced in Maoming.
It's time for the lychee flowers to smell again. What new breakthroughs have been made in Maoming's lychee industry today? With the in-depth implementation of Guangdong's "High-Quality Development Project for 100 Counties, Thousands of Towns and Thousands of Villages" (hereinafter referred to as the "100,000 Project"), how can these "little fruits" dressed in red clothes leverage the great industry of enriching the people in Maoming? From lychees to longans and sanhua plums, how are Maoming's "native specialties" articles doing? At the end of March, the Guangming Daily research team came to Maoming, and the clusters of lychee flowers in the Genzigong Garden were in full bloom, and the nectar was dripping with the wind.
1. Multi-pronged, just for the "mouthful" of fresh fruits
If you don't get close to the lychee flower clusters, it's hard to see that there's something else in the flowers: clumps of green young fruits no bigger than mung beans are crowded together, scrambling to poke out their round heads and enjoy the sun and rain.
"Don't look at these small fruits now, in two months or so, it will be full of fiery red bent branches!" He Shuzhi said as he led the research team to a tree with a canopy like a giant umbrella: "Gongyuan is a 'living lychee museum', these ancient lychee trees not only carry history, but also maintain a stable yield." Like this 'Fairy Scattered Flower' has a yield of about 700 catties, the 'Thousand Hands Guanyin' over there can yield 900 catties, and the 'Twenty-four Dan' that grows strong and is more than 800 years old, and the fruit is as many as 2400 catties when ripe, which is converted to weigh 2400 catties. ”
Every year, the flowers are endless, and the fruits are full of branches. Listening to He Shuzhi's easy narration and looking at the ancient lychee trees that are still alive after thousands of years, the research team felt more and more the significance of lychee to Maoming. In April 2023, General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out during his inspection of Baiqiao Village: "Trees more than 1,000 years ago can be preserved to the present. It shows that the lychee planting here has cultural heritage and historical inheritance, and it also shows that the people of Baiqiao have a strong awareness of the protection of the ecological environment and the lychee industry, so that the thousand-year-old trees can still benefit the people. ”
Protection continues and continues to be strengthened. "In order to make the branches of ancient trees flourish, we have adopted a 'one tree, one policy' management approach. He Xia, the first secretary of Baiqiao Village, told the research team that now in Maoming, ancient litchi trees that are more than 100 years old are hung with "ID cards", which record detailed information such as varieties, years, management units, and guardians. At the same time, Maoming has established a grid management model in combination with the forest chief system, and a group of experienced and skilled "soil experts" like He Shuzhi have been hired as full-time guardians of ancient trees. "These ancient lychee trees are important germplasm resources, and it is of great significance to protect them, so we must start from the source to make these ancient trees 'beat' more high-quality, sweet and delicious lychees. He Xia said.
Indeed, in order for the lychee industry to develop, it must first have good fresh fruits. And good fresh fruit is inseparable from the support of good varieties, good management and protection methods, and good preservation methods.
Walking along the smooth mountain road through the lush greenery, the research team soon arrived at the National Lychee Germplasm Resource Nursery, also located in Gaozhou, which was put into use in May 2022 and planted different varieties of lychee trees. "We will plant 5 plants of each variety, and at present, the resource garden brings together more than 700 copies and more than 3,500 lychee germplasm resources at home and abroad, making it the largest lychee germplasm resource garden in the world. According to Zhao Junsheng, director of the Maoming Comprehensive Experimental Station of the National Lychee Longan Industrial Technology System that has studied lychee for nearly 20 years, the role of germplasm resource nurseries is not only variety protection, but also utilization and transformation. "Now we have more breeding material, and it's easier to breed high-quality lychee varieties. Zhao Junsheng led the research team to the wisdom orchard. There are more than 100 lychees that are crossed with white sugar poppies, shrimp skewers, cinnamon and other varieties, and some have begun to set fruit.
"Lychee has 'big and small years', and unstable yields often plague litchi farmers. One of the reasons for the emergence of 'big and small years' is related to varieties, such as cinnamon flavor, glutinous rice balls and other varieties are prone to 'big and small years'. You can see that these hybrid fruit trees are easy to flower, and the fruit setting rate is high, and we can breed more high-quality varieties without 'big and small years' in the future. Zhao Junsheng's words were full of pride and hope.
Next to the National Lychee Germplasm Resource Nursery is the China Lychee Expo. Here, in addition to the history of "Li", the "Li" events, the people of "Li", the rhyme of "Li", etc., the research team also got a glimpse of the modern technology of lychee planting - a huge electronic screen scrolls the real-time data of each lychee orchard. He Qing, secretary of the general party branch of Baiqiao Village, told the research team that the Maoming lychee industry big data platform brings together meteorological monitoring, soil monitoring and other data and real-time videos of each lychee orchard, which can be fed back to farmers, and farmers can also ask questions to agricultural technology experts through the platform.
"Now we are talking about scientific planting, and many agricultural experts will usually come to guide us in planting, and strive to increase production. He Jinming, a large planter in Baiqiao Village, counted the changes in the past year with his fingers: "I used to plant 120 acres of lychees, but last year I felt that the lychee industry was promising, so I transferred another 80 acres of land to plant lychees." Now, the lychees are directly handed over to the 'Tiantou Station' for pre-cooling when they are picked from the branches, which effectively eliminates the heat in the fields and prolongs the shelf life.
As we all know, the preservation of lychee is a difficult problem. Bai Juyi once lamented that lychee "If you leave the branch, the color will change in one day, the fragrance will change in two days, the taste will change in three days, and the color and fragrance will disappear in four or five days." Nowadays, even with cold storage to keep them fresh, the freshness of lychees begins to decrease from the moment they leave the branches, and they will be lost due to accumulation in the field waiting for transfer. In order to solve this problem, the "Tiantou Station" cold chain transport vehicle came into being. When the lychee harvest season arrives, these trucks drive into the field at the agreed time with the growers to pre-cool the picked lychees as soon as possible. According to statistics, 59 Tiantou smart stations have been built in Gaozhou City, and pre-cooling technology and nitrogen preservation methods have been introduced to extend the best edible period of lychees. In 2023, the output of lychees in Gaozhou City will reach a new high of 246,400 tons, and farmers' income will increase by more than 20% year-on-year.
In addition to the "Tiantou Station", many scientific researchers are also working hard to solve the problem of lychee preservation. Last year, Maoming introduced a national-level scientific research team to achieve a breakthrough in lychee preservation technology. "The shelf life has been further extended, and the good fruit rate of lychees can still reach 99.8% after 20 days of storage, and our lychees are more widely sold and of better quality, and the price has increased by more than 30%. He Qing said.
"At present, we are mainly conducting research on lychee preservation technology in three aspects: plant-derived preservation technology, physical source preservation technology and microbial source preservation technology. Dr. Shen Fei of the Maoming Agricultural Technology Extension Center told the research team, "Different preservation technologies have different characteristics, such as microbial source preservation technology is to use anaerobic probiotics to inhibit postharvest respiration of lychee, adjust the surface and internal microbial community structure of fruits, and inhibit oxidative browning, and explore biological preservation methods." No matter which technology is used, it is to develop a practical technology for the preservation of lychees that is green, has no food safety hazards and has a shelf life. ”
For this fresh fruit that is "wrapped in white jade skin in the sac, and the agar is sweet as a syrup", every link is making efforts from resource protection, breeding to planting and preservation. It is these forces that have lifted Maoming's outstanding achievements of producing more than 620,000 tons of lychees and producing about 9 billion yuan of fresh fruits every year.
2. Extend the chain to touch the network, and the "small fruit" leverages the 10 billion yuan market
Lychee honey, lychee drink, lychee wine, lychee vinegar, lychee rice stuffed ...... In the exhibition hall on the first floor of the Longan Lychee Professional Cooperative in Genzi Baiqiao, Gaozhou City, the research team was dazzled by the dazzling array of lychee processing products. At this time, the processing workshop on the second floor is busy, and the screening machine rotates while sorting the dried lychee fruits of different sizes into different packing boxes. On another production line, products such as dried longan are waiting to be packed.
Lin Changzhen, director of Baiqiao Agricultural Innovation Park, opened a jar of lychee honey and warmly beckoned the members of the research team to smell the sweet smell. "Fresh fruit is only available once a year, and it doesn't last long. If you want to make a big lychee industry, you can't just sell fresh fruits. At present, the output value of agricultural product processing in our village has 100 million yuan a year, driving the employment of more than 3,000 people. The annual per capita income of the villagers exceeded 50,000 yuan. Lin Changzhen, who has been rooted in his hometown and developed the lychee industry for 26 years and is known as the "lychee mother", told the research team that the Baiqiao Longan Lychee Professional Cooperative has also signed a procurement agreement with some leading enterprises such as Guangzhou Pharmaceutical Group to deliver fresh fruits to them.
The extension of the industrial chain is inseparable from the leading enterprises. In the Guangyao Wanglaoji Guangdong Lychee (Maoming) Industrial Park in Gaozhou City, the most advanced, single-line production capacity and most automated lychee juice production line in China is working intensively, which can process 200 tons of fresh lychee fruits per day. After the fresh fruit enters the lychee deep processing production line, it "transforms" into more than 20 products, breaking the seasonal constraints of traditional lychee consumption and allowing lychees to be "eaten all year round".
On the road of increasing added value, Lin Changzhen is not idle - she has cooperated with the agricultural science and technology team to develop deep-processed products such as lychee enzymes, lychee drinks, and lychee wine. "I also registered brands such as 'Steamed Girl' and 'Pinlingnan', and sold these processed products through e-commerce channels, all over the country and even abroad. Lin Changzhen said proudly.
The processing of agricultural products is linked to production at one end and sales at the other. When the conversation with the research team was coming to an end, Lin Changzhen's son turned on the live broadcast equipment on time according to the usual live broadcast time and sat in front of the camera.
"Now that villagers can't sell lychee processed products without e-commerce, more and more young people like my son are returning to their hometowns to participate in lychee sales, and they continue to expand the sales channels of lychee products through live streaming and other methods to help everyone increase their income. As the founder of Gaozhou Caixian Garden Fruit and Vegetable Professional Cooperative, Lin Changzhen often organizes villagers to learn online sales, sales skills and other knowledge. In 2023, the cooperative's sales will reach more than 18 million yuan, and farmers' money bags are getting bigger and bigger.
The research team learned that Guangdong grasped the new growth point of agricultural product sales of live broadcast e-commerce, and gave full play to the role of live broadcast e-commerce in driving the development of local characteristic industries in counties, towns and villages. In 2023, Maoming will launch the "National Marketing Competition", with more than 3,600 lychee e-commerce companies and more than 8,000 micro-businesses participating in live streaming, and the city's lychee e-commerce sales will reach 2.346 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 9%.
With the help of the "Millions and Thousands Project", the Maoming lychee industry chain has burst out with new vitality, with about 3,000 lychee processing enterprises and a total output value of more than 12 billion yuan.
As a distribution center for the processing and sales of fresh longan fruits and dried fruits at home and abroad, Gaozhou processes more than 100,000 tons of fresh longan fruits annually, and has formed a development trend of "buying the world and selling the world"; the output value of the entire industrial chain of Xinyi Sanhua Li 1, 2 and 3 has reached 5.32 billion yuan, and it has been selected as one of the top 100 regional public brands of "Yuezihao" county-level famous, special and excellent new agricultural products, with a brand value of 15.93 billion yuan......
Bidding farewell to Gaozhou City, the research team went to Shuanghe Village, Qianpai Town, Xinyi City, located in the hinterland of Yunkai Mountain. The late spring and early autumn are very suitable for plum growth. "Xinyi has introduced and planted Sanhua plum for half a century, and the city has planted 328,000 acres of plums, and gradually formed its own brand Xinyi Yinfei Li through planting technology improvement and quality improvement. Wang Hongmei, a staff member of the Rural Revitalization Center of Qianpai Town, told the research team that as the core production area of Sanhua Li, farmers in various villages of Qianpai Town are rich because of "Li".
"Only planting plums, the annual income of each household in the village can reach more than 100,000 yuan, and there are quite a lot of farmers with an annual income of 200,000 yuan!" Li Guanzhang, secretary of the general party branch of Shuanghe Village, said with a smile, in recent years, the normalized agricultural technology training and the model of "cooperatives + bases + farmers" have standardized the planting, management and sales of plums, improved the quality of plums, and sold them at a good price.
At the Xinyi Shuanghe E-commerce Center in Shuanghe Village, the research team saw a sample of Xinyi Yinfei Li packaging with a pesticide residue test report and a "traceability code". In the harvest season every year, only the size and quality inspection of the silver concubine plum can obtain the "ID card" to enter the fresh fruit market, and the smaller plum enters the production line of plum wine, plum preserved fruit, plum beverage and other products.
"In accordance with the development logic of industrial intensification and agglomeration, Maoming has developed and formed characteristic advantageous industrial clusters such as lychee, longan, Xinyi plum, orange red, agarwood, tilapia, etc., and the continuous expansion and strengthening of the industry has broadened the channels for the people to increase their income and become rich, and laid a solid foundation for comprehensive rural revitalization. Zou Guobing, deputy director of the Maoming Municipal Bureau of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, said.
3. Beads form a chain, and the landscape and countryside encounter "poetry and distance"
During the interview at Genzigong Garden, the research team saw tourists entering the garden with brisk steps from time to time, carefully examining these ancient lychee trees that tell thousand-year-old stories. "The ancient lychee tree has not only brought benefits to the villagers, but also brought fame and popularity to the village. You may not know that Genzigong Garden is a 3A-level scenic spot, and Baiqiao Village is also a key village for rural tourism in the country. He Qing said.
In addition to the Tribute Garden, Baiqiao Village is also home to the National Lychee Germplasm Resource Garden, the China Lychee Expo and the China Lychee Industry Conference. With the 10-kilometer Lixiang Landscape Avenue as the main axis, Genzi Town has created a unique Lingnan style of Gongyuan Lixiang. With the lychee blossoms, groups of tourists who "enjoy the flowers and sigh the honey" come to "check in".
When the research team came to the Qiaotou B&B in Genzi Town, Ding Haiqin, the person in charge of the B&B, was busy cleaning up the room. "We have just left a group of tourists, and our small courtyard has 14 rooms, which are often full on weekends, and even more difficult to find when the lychees are ripe. The "post-90s" girl said.
He Qing added: "After the Spring Festival this year, we created the Baiqiao Night Market, which is open every Friday and Saturday night, with a food and entertainment area, and the villagers have a good place to go after tea and dinner, and it also attracts many tourists." At present, a lychee-themed hotel is being built in Lixiang Scenic Area, which is expected to open before May 20. ”
The practice of integrated development of agriculture, culture and tourism is also staged in Xinyi. In Shuanghe Village, Li Guanzhang introduced that in addition to planting and processing, Xinyi Yinfei Li also has great value - every Spring Festival, tens of thousands of acres of plum flowers bloom in Shuanghe Village, attracting countless tourists. Relying on such a natural endowment, Xinyi City will build a demonstration project for the integration of agriculture, culture and tourism from 2021 onwards.
Now, the project has been preliminarily completed, and the appearance of Shuanghe Village has taken on a new look - the clear water passes through the village, the pavilion bridge spans the water, and the small residential buildings with blue tiles and white walls on both sides reflect the landscape and water. Walking in the village, the plank road "along the stream", the Baicao Garden, the children's paradise, the library, the memory and cultural heritage hall, the hotel, and the high-end homestay are dizzying...... There is no shortage of local scenery and modern facilities.
Spring flowers, summer fruits. Relying on the attraction of "plum blossom flourishing" and plum picking, Xinyi Yinfei Li characteristic agriculture and eco-tourism have been integrated, forming a vivid situation of mutual promotion of agriculture and tourism. "In the past two years, Qianpai Town has received more than 1 million tourists every year, and Shuanghe Village has received more than 300,000 tourists during the seven-day Spring Festival holiday, and has also created a 'miracle' of rural tourism with a single-day passenger flow of more than 50,000 people." Li Xianyou, mayor of Qianpai Town, told the research team that when the "Plum Flower Festival" and "Silver Concubine Li Enjoy Li Ji" are held every year, the local people are very popular. Villagers have opened their minds and opened homestays, supermarkets, restaurants, and picking gardens, which has added another way to get rich and increase income.
"In 2023, we will pay dividends for the first time in Shuanghe Village, with a total amount of 1.13 million yuan, and 1,251 farmers will benefit from the dividends. Li Guanzhang proudly said that this dividend benefited from the integrated development of agriculture and tourism.
"In this dividend, we have received real money, and we have also seen a bright future for the integrated development of agriculture, culture and tourism, and a happier prospect!" Li Huanlong, a villager from Shuanghe Village, said emotionally.
In 2021, the Yunmao Expressway, which narrows the distance between the mountainous areas of western Guangdong and the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, will be opened to traffic...... The rural tourist attraction with Xinyi Li as the core "beads into a chain" has formed a combination of agriculture, culture and tourism with a change of scenery, and has also brought fire to Xinyi's specialty nostalgic chicken, head nest eggs, mustard greens and other agricultural products. The "native products" articles written on the land of western Guangdong are becoming more and more dazzling.
4. Experience and Enlightenment
Guided by the spirit of General Secretary Xi Jinping's important speech and important instructions during his inspection of Guangdong, Maoming City has further promoted the "Millions and Thousands Project", comprehensively promoted rural revitalization, vigorously developed characteristic agriculture, and actively built the three major systems of "industry, production and operation" of modern agriculture, promoted the promotion of the whole link, the whole chain of value-added and the integration of the whole industry, and further consolidated the status of the first agricultural city in Guangdong Province. Factor guarantee and other aspects have accumulated rich experience and provided important enlightenment for the comprehensive revitalization of rural areas.
Party building leads and gathers the power of revitalization. Maoming keeps in mind the entrustment of General Secretary Xi Jinping, takes the implementation of the "Millions and Thousands Project" as the traction, gathers the hearts of the people, seeks common prosperity, adheres to the guidance of party building, and builds an entrepreneurial team with "red thinking, hard style, fine business and high efficiency". With General Secretary Xi Jinping's inspection and research site in Baiqiao Village as the main line, Maoming opened the "Baiqiao Lecture Hall" to create a position for ideological education, a classroom for disseminating knowledge, and a window for publicizing the achievements of the "Millions and Thousands of Projects", so as to widely gather important forces to promote the comprehensive revitalization of the countryside.
Prioritize ecology and expand rural business formats. Maoming attaches great importance to the protection of ancient and famous trees, and makes full use of the resource endowments of ancient lychee forests, landscapes, and pastorals, so that "local specialties" such as lychee, longan, and plum have become an important engine to increase farmers' income and promote the comprehensive revitalization of the countryside. At the same time, we will dig deep into local characteristics, expand multiple functions of agriculture, multi-functional expansion, multi-format aggregation, and multi-scene application, so as to do fine and excellent rural leisure tourism, flourish rural formats, and realize "ecological beauty", "industrial prosperity" and "people's wealth".
Technology empowerment enhances industrial value. With the strong support of science and technology projects in Guangdong Province and Maoming City, enterprises, universities and scientific research institutions are actively engaged in the research and innovation of key technologies such as planting, preservation and processing of agricultural products, so as to promote technological progress and increase output value. Taking lychee as an example, 274 "small field stations" have been established in the city to effectively improve agricultural production efficiency. At the same time, Maoming strengthens the construction of R&D institutions of relevant enterprises, promotes the transformation of scientific and technological achievements, and actively builds a collaborative innovation model of industry, university and research.
Dare to try and dare to break through, and do a good job in reform and innovation. In the process of implementing the "Millions and Thousands Project", Maoming planned to carry out 17 "small incision" reforms. For example, the "145" working method for rural revitalization has been innovatively proposed to promote more scientific rural construction and more sustainable operation. Innovate and launch the customized sales model of "native products", open up new sales channels for special products, and realize "first-come-first-served money". Carry out a series of creative marketing activities to comprehensively enhance the influence of "local specialties". Guide the financial "living water" to help, and strive to solve the "three rural" loan problems.
(Author: Guangming Daily Research Group Research Group Members: Zhuang Weiguang, special researcher of the Guangdong Xi Jinping Research Center for Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, director and researcher of the Institute of Environment and Development of the Guangdong Academy of Social Sciences; Wu Wenxia, associate researcher of the Institute of Environment and Development of the Guangdong Academy of Social Sciences; Wu Chunyan, Chen Chen, and Tang Yige, reporters of this newspaper)
Editor: Nie Yue
Source: Guangming Daily