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Originally published in the third issue of "Rural Youth" magazine in 2024, 4 excavators were sold for only one Li Ziwen / Reporter Liu Shuchen in late winter and early spring, the cold was unexpectedly steep. Although the weather is still a little cold, walking into the thousand-acre bee sugar plum garden in Shuangqiao Village, Chengguan Town, Shiquan, Shaanxi, the first buds sprout, the unique fragrance of bee sugar plum rushes to the face, and the new green on the branches is swaying in the breeze. Under the Li tree, the waist board is straight, the short hair is neat, and the "post-85" young man Yang Xinggang is carefully observing the growth of the shoots. Looking at the emerald greenery around him and listening to the chirping of birds, Yang Xinggang felt extremely comfortable. "This year must be a bumper year!" he confidently told a reporter from Rural Youth magazine.
2024 is the 9th year that Yang Xinggang has returned to Shuangqiao Village to operate Bee Candy Plum, and his Bee Candy Plum has reached a new level, "There is no shortage of plums in Shiquan, and the scale of my orchard is not particularly large, with 300 acres, but all of them are high-quality. The plums grown by others sell well for more than 10 yuan a catty, and the high-quality bee candy plums in my orchard cost 10 yuan each, which is still in short supply." Although bee candy plums have been selling better and better in recent years, Yang Xinggang has calculated the accounts: "In 2023, bee candy plums will be sold for more than 1.7 million yuan, which is a very good result, but it is still a loss overall. "Why did you choose to go back to your hometown to plant plums? Why did you choose to go back to your hometown to plant plums? Why did you go to the orchard without hesitation when there was such a difference in income?
The first pot of gold
Yang Xinggang has not been a "worry-free" child since he was a child, he has strong hands-on ability and aggressiveness. Coming from a rural area, he has always been very fond of machinery, especially excavators. In addition to machinery, he also loved agriculture, and at the age of 15 he studied grafting techniques at home and tried his hand at planting landscape trees. But his family has not supported him to plant trees, after all, the investment is large and the results are slow. "When I was in middle school, I planted trees for a while, but I didn't have much income, so I thought it would be better to go out and earn some money before thinking about planting trees. Yang Xinggang said.
In 2005, Yang Xinggang, who was not yet 20 years old, borrowed money from relatives and friends to buy excavators and loaders, contracted projects in Shiquan County, and started a business. "At the age of 19, I owed a lot of money, but I didn't feel much pressure and felt like I would be able to pay it back. Yang Xinggang, who dared to think and dare to do, was keenly aware of business opportunities, according to him, there were less than 10 excavators in Shiquan County at that time, and it was in the current situation of "more work and less machinery". After doing a few projects, there was a steady stream of engineering projects to find him, and Yang Xinggang quickly gained a firm foothold in the earthwork excavation project.
Yang Xinggang inspected the growth of Li Shu in 2008, only 3 years have passed, Yang Xinggang not only paid off the arrears, but also increased the excavator from 1 to 4, and the annual income can reach nearly one million yuan.
In 2014, one of Yang Xinggang's "old watches" knew that he liked agriculture very much, so he asked him where he had high-quality and high-price plums, and wanted to cooperate with him to sell them. "This kind of business is time-consuming and laborious, and a month may not make as much money as I can for a project. Although the benefits are not high for him, Yang Xinggang still found plums in Mianyang, Sichuan, which only ripen in August through Internet searches, which happen to be out of season with Shaanxi plums, which is suitable for wholesale sales. The two drove to Mianyang to wholesale 800 catties of plums at a unit price of 3.5 yuan/catty, and finally sold out at a price of 6.5 yuan/catty.
Seeing that he had made money, the "old watch" contacted Yang Xinggang again and planned to go to Mianyang for more wholesale this time. However, Yang Xinggang thought that Chengdu's gardening was very famous, so he got off the bus halfway to Chengdu to learn gardening. Looking at those vibrant seedlings, Yang Xinggang thought of the days when he planted landscape trees when he was young, "Although I make money from doing projects, I still prefer pastoral life and deal with flowers and trees." Yang Xinggang's heart gradually rippled.
After several twists and turns, I finally saw the bee candy plum
In 2015, Wang Yong, the first secretary of Shuangqiao Village, learned that Yang Xinggang had planted landscape trees and had never forgotten agriculture, so he took the initiative to contact him, hoping that he would return to his hometown to continue to engage in agriculture, and promised to apply for 200 acres of land for him to plant trees. Yang Xinggang thinks that this is a good opportunity, what exactly should be planted? He considered that although he has experience in planting landscape trees, the return cycle is too long, so planting fruit trees is a good choice. In 2014, I sold plums in Mianyang with the "old watch", so why not try to grow them yourself? There is no shortage of plums in southern Shaanxi, but the old varieties of plums are smaller, and the taste and sweetness are poor, "since you have decided to plant plums, you must plant the most delicious plums."
Yang Xinggang searched for "which plum is the best" on the Internet, and the search result was a bee candy plum that he had never eaten. He was curious to find a company that grows bee sugar plums and called to consult, but he didn't expect the other party's reply to surprise him: their bee sugar plums cost more than 30 yuan a catty. "You can buy beef for more than 30 yuan, why is a plum so expensive? It must be a liar. At that time, Yang Xinggang felt incredible, hung up the phone in a hurry, and decided to plant Mianyang plums.
After the introduction of the saplings, I did not expect that Shiquan had a lot of rain, which was not suitable for the growth of this fruit tree, and the first attempt ended in failure. Yang Xinggang thought of the "sky-high plum" bee candy plum again, and then bought some and decided to try it. Bee candy plums are indeed worthy of the name of "the best plum", they are juicy, the skin is very thin, the flesh is delicate, the taste is sweet and sour, and the aroma is rich. Yang Xinggang, who was still busy on the construction site, decided to immediately go to Zhenning County, Guizhou, the origin of bee sugar plums, to explore the "true face of Lushan" of bee sugar plums. After explaining his intentions to his family in the evening, he was met with strong opposition: "The project is not over yet, so you don't care? Planting plums can return to the original cost in a few years? The benefits of earth and stone excavation and receiving the project are just around the corner, so why do you have to plant plums?" Yang Xinggang, who was opposed by his family, understood very well, but he did not want to miss the opportunity to devote himself to agriculture again.
The next day, Yang Xinggang and his friends drove for two days and two nights to Langpao Village, Liuma Town, Zhenning County. As soon as I got out of the car, I saw plums everywhere, and the fatigue of running all night disappeared in an instant. Yang Xinggang found a farmer to buy some plums and tasted them, the taste was indeed sweet but it didn't seem to be as crisp and sweet as he had eaten before, and he turned around and asked the farmer how much it was, but he didn't expect the other party to say 5 yuan a catty. Yang Xinggang was suddenly a little discouraged: "Didn't you say that more than 30 yuan a catty? How much profit can this 5 yuan have, I was really deceived?" He picked up the plum and looked at it carefully, and found that it was slightly different from the bee candy plum he had eaten before.
Yang Xinggang showed people the bee sugar plum After the guidance of the farmer, Yang Xinggang came to the bee sugar plum plantation. After many twists and turns, I finally found the "most delicious" bee candy plum. He immediately bought more than 20,000 yuan of bee sugar plums and saplings, returned to Shiquan County, and began to try planting.
It's delicious and not easy to grow
Although the market potential of bee sugar plum is large, but before that, there was no precedent for successful planting of excellent varieties such as bee sugar plum in southern Shaanxi, and variety selection and technical management all required Yang Xinggang to start from scratch. Yang Xinggang took a lot of detours when he introduced bee candy plums, "When I first started planting, I thought about things too simply, and I felt that after this plum tree was planted, it would naturally bear fruit." In 2020, looking at the plum trees that were expected to be full of fruit, Yang Xinggang dug up the fruit trees, "The row spacing of the previous planting was 4 meters by 4 meters, which was too dense, so I had to dig and replant." The renovation of the 300 acres of orchards cost more than 2 million yuan, and if someone had guided me at the beginning, I wouldn't have spent this unjust money." He pointed to the excavator parked next to the orchard and said: "This excavator was bought in 2019 to renovate the plum orchard, and this excavator was used to dig up the plum trees that had grown for four years and replant them." ”
Before planting bee candy plums, Yang Xinggang had 4 excavators. After becoming obsessed with Bee Candy Plum, he sold all 4 excavators and invested all his money and energy into Bee Candy Plum. What Yang Xinggang didn't expect was that in order to dig up the wrong plum tree, he bought another excavator......
Yang Xinggang and his excavator "Why do bee candy plums sell so high, delicious things are not easy to grow, and good things cannot be sold at a price." There are three key points in planting bee candy plums, to know how to prune, as well as accurate fertilizer and precise pesticide application, which is the experience I have summed up after countless failures over the years. Yang Xinggang said.
In order to grow bee sugar plums, Yang Xinggang has run through Yunnan, Guizhou, and Sichuan. "The area of plum planting in Yunnan, Guichuan is relatively large, more than 10,000 acres, and basically went to more than 10 houses. He goes to receive training every year and communicates with the big plum growers with leading technology and varieties in various places. "You have to do agriculture yourself, you have to understand it, you have to really be a farmer, get up early and go dark. When you do engineering, you can arrange an excavator master, compared to agriculture, it is more tiring, but if you like it, you don't feel tired. Yang Xinggang said that he likes life in the mountains, listening to the birds, walking into the orchard, one day at a time, and feeling very good. Living in the mountains, eating the fruits and vegetables he grows, and enjoying the pastoral life, this is the life that Yang Xinggang yearns for.
Yang Xinggang does not plan to plant the bee sugar plums as simply as the fruit farmers in Langpao Village. Back in 2018, when it was first introduced, he decided to try to improve the variety by grafting large trees. After several years and several attempts, he found that the plum tree was grafted onto the peach tree, and after the plum seedlings grafted on it in the spring germinated, the peach tree buds were pinched off, and the plum tree grafted with the peach tree as a rootstock had good affinity and vigorous growth. Through cooperation with local research institutes, Yang Xinggang has improved the taste, sweetness and fruit-bearing time of bee candy plums.
In 2023, the bee sugar plum will finally usher in a bumper harvest, and this year alone, the orchard sales revenue will reach 1.7 million yuan. Looking at the answer sheet he has handed in for many years in agriculture, Yang Xinggang is more satisfied, although the overall calculation is still a loss: "I came back to do agriculture, and it has been 9 years since I came back to do agriculture. At that time, most of the engineering accumulation was invested in orchards, and excavators were sold. The fruit trees were dug and planted, and I can't count the number of times I have failed. Roughly calculated, it is still a loss of more than 2 million yuan. ”
In the past two years, after the technology of planting bee sugar plums matured, Yang Xinggang vigorously promoted bee sugar plums in Shiquan County. Holding lectures and providing technical guidance in the field, he tries to help other fruit growers avoid detours: "It is not easy for young people to devote themselves to agriculture now, and one failure can be fatal to them. And no matter what kind of agricultural industry, you can't develop in a cluster by yourself. I hope that more farmers in Shiquan will grow high-quality plums, and in the future, we will dig deep into the folk culture and farming culture of Shiquan, and vigorously develop new forms of business such as sightseeing agriculture, experience agriculture, and creative agriculture. ”
Yang Xinggang said that there are many young people around him who have returned to their hometowns to do agriculture like him, but very few have persevered. Just imagine, if he had been working all the time, it might have been another life. "Fortunately, in 2023, we finally saw the return. According to this trend, the recovery cost will only take 2 years, and I will have to plant these plum trees for decades!" Yang Xinggang decided to continue to grow bee sugar plums, increase the added value, and build them into a "new business card" of Shiquan agricultural products.
Rural Youth Magazine
Source: "Rural Youth" Magazine 2024 Issue 3 Final Review: Lin Yuhong Reviewer: Yang Ming Liu Zhuying Editor: Liu Shuchen