Compared with titles such as the president of Shanghai Songlin Food Group or the Standing Committee of the Shanghai Municipal Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, Wang Xuelian prefers the label of "second generation of farmers" attached to her body.
After returning from Australia, Wang Xuelian took over the "baton" from her father Wang Longqin, who founded Songlin Food, and led this national key leading enterprise in agricultural industrialization, under the cultivation of Songjiang's first-class science and technology innovation ecology, relying on the development of the whole industrial chain of planting and breeding combined with ecological cycle model and the integration of production and marketing, to create a green ecological agricultural industrialization system with pigs and rice as the main agricultural products, promote the integrated development of primary, secondary and tertiary industries, and gradually explore an ecological cycle suitable for the agricultural development of Shanghai megacity. The road to a win-win situation for agriculture and animal husbandry
"Returning to China to raise pigs!" Wang Xuelian, who majored in international trade and modern logistics in college, although she did not reject her father's call, but it was the memories of agriculture and rural areas that finally made her decide to raise pigs. "As a farmer's child, I have been accustomed to raising chickens, rabbits and other poultry and small animals since I was a child, and I am no stranger to farming. I was just over 10 years old when my father started the business in 1992, and since then I've been in the countryside more often. Wang Xuelian recalls that the rare "field green" in Shanghai's international metropolis has taken root in the depths of her memory, and she hopes that people can enjoy the "original taste" of agricultural products.
After taking the helm of Songlin Food, Wang Xuelian's beautiful green memories of the countryside have gradually transformed into almost demanding requirements for the green development of the whole pig industry chain. "From pig breeding, feeding, to slaughtering, processing, cold chain distribution, sales, etc., all have adopted standardized production and management methods, especially the whole process controllable production mode, to ensure the quality, safety and quality of pine forest products. Wang Xuelian added that all the pigs in the enterprise have achieved green ecological breeding.
The green breeding of pigs also lies in the breakthrough of the combination of planting and breeding. Songlin Food uses the "company + farm" layout to combine planting and breeding with pig breeding ecological cycle model, farmers raise pigs while planting rice, and the manure and urine produced by pig raising are collected and fermented and returned to the field for full use. In 2019, this ecological cycle model was selected as an excellent case of national livestock and poultry manure resource utilization, which is a vivid demonstration of Shanghai's practice of urban modern green agriculture development. "The combination of planting and breeding family farms will concentrate on pig manure and urine, scientifically treat it, and return it to the field in full, which effectively solves the problem of environmental pollution of breeding manure and farmland 'weight loss and pills'. After calculation, Wang Xuelian found that the combination of planting and breeding can reduce the use of chemical fertilizers in farmland by more than 30%.
Today, the "Songlin" brand is a famous trademark in Shanghai, and "Songlin" pork has become the only pork product in Shanghai that has passed the national green food certification. Relying on the combination of planting and breeding combined with ecological mode, 15,000 acres of "Songlin" brand Songjiang rice has obtained the green food certificate, of which 898 acres have passed the organic food certification. "Pine Forest" pork and "Pine Forest" rice have won many honors such as China International Agricultural Products Fair, China Green Food Expo, and China International Organic Food Expo. "Since the implementation of the ecological cycle model of planting and breeding in 2008, Songlin Food has driven the income of surrounding farmers to increase by more than 600 million yuan. Wang Xuelian added that this is all due to the power of green agricultural development.
With land and manpower being expensive, and the abundant supply of agricultural products from other places, how can Shanghai's real estate agricultural products spell out the market? After thinking deeply, Wang Xuelian launched the development model of Songlin Food: The products should be very "exquisite" and the model should be "advanced" enough.
Around "exquisite", there have been different views between the two generations of farmers of his father Wang Longqin and Wang Xuelian. Taking the "Songlin" brand Songjiang rice packaging as an example, Wang Xuelian led the launch of some Songjiang rice packaging with "black bag silver characters" on the grounds that the color scheme is more atmospheric and fashionable, while Wang Longqin believes that the green characters on a white background can better represent the characteristics of agricultural products. After analyzing the big data of consumer purchases, Wang Longqin made concessions and sighed: "The quality of agricultural products should be improved, and the concept of developing and operating agricultural products cannot be stagnant, and the new generation of farmers can indeed better meet consumers' higher-quality consumption needs." ”
Songlin Food is currently the largest production base of pig self-breeding and self-raising in Shanghai, with more than 280,000 pigs on the market every year in the form of healthy and flavored "Songlin" pastoral fresh pigs. For Shanghai's agriculture, which has a limited planting scale, it is not easy to "eat and squeeze out" the waste from pig breeding.
In recent years, Songlin Food has gradually explored a new model of large-scale farming in urban and rural areas to reduce pollution and reduce carbon emissions. Take a building breeding project of Songlin Food as an example: 80,000 pigs are slaughtered annually, and about 63,000 tons of manure need to be treated, and the manure exists in the form of dry manure, biogas slurry, biogas residue and biogas, Songlin Food cooperates with Shenergy Group to make 3,000 tons of organic fertilizer from livestock and poultry manure through dry and wet separation equipment, and biogas slurry and biogas residue are made into 3,400 acres of rice and biogas residue through the pipe network. Organic fertilizer is applied to vegetable bases and fruit forests, and about 3 million cubic meters of biogas are produced annually, which can be utilized through power generation and integration into Shanghai's urban gas pipeline network. Wang Xuelian said that the model also reduced carbon emissions by nearly 20,000 tons, and the ecological and social benefits are very obvious.
In addition, under the leadership of Wang Xuelian, the introduction of digitalization and intelligence has also brought new vitality to the development of Songlin Food. "I still remember when I first joined the company, it took a long time to sign documents every day, and the inability to sign on a business trip affected the efficient promotion of related work. Wang Xuelian recalled.
On the day of the interview, Wang Xuelian, dressed in studded jeans and a pair of white high boots, was dressed exquisitely. She said with a smile that friends often ask her how often she goes to the breeding plant, in fact, the pig farm intelligent temperature probe, fan, floor heating, water curtain and other environmental control equipment and automatic feeding, manure removal equipment are readily available, has achieved fully automatic remote control, can do 1 person to manage 5000 pigs. Wang Xuelian revealed that at present, Songlin Food has more than 700 employees, generally over 50 years old, and the proportion of young people is relatively low, but she believes that the countryside of Shanghai, which is backed by the megacity, must have a great future, and looks forward to more new generations of farmers joining in to pursue their dreams.
Text: Han Haifeng
Photo: Courtesy of the interviewee
Editor: Wang Zhengyang