Jingchu Network (Hubei Daily) News (Reporter Wang Yi, Correspondent Lu Dingqin, Liu Gang, Jia Jun) At noon on May 14, in the Zhenggang Honeysuckle Planting Farmers Professional Cooperative in Xiangyang High-tech Zone, villager Xu Youshun put a bag full of fresh honeysuckle on the weighing table, "18.7 catties, 93.5 yuan!" ”
"Yes, Lao Xu, I picked more than ninety yuan in the morning, and I can't get 200 yuan a day!" The pickers who were waiting in line to weigh them congratulated Xu Youshun one after another.
Villagers wait to be weighed after picking. Photo by reporter Wang Yi
It is understood that due to the terrain restrictions, there has been a lot of wasteland in Zhenggang in recent years, especially on the slopes on both sides of the highway, and there are very few cash crops that can be planted. In May 2020, Weng Jie, secretary of Zhenggang Community, led the "two committees" of the community to Linyi, Shandong Province to inspect and study, and established the "Zhenggang Honeysuckle Planting Farmers Professional Cooperative in Xiangyang High-tech Development Zone" in the same year, taking the development of honeysuckle industry as a characteristic industry to boost rural revitalization, exploring the collective economic development model of land shares, capital shares, and "community + cooperatives + farmers", introducing honeysuckle planting to boost collective economic development.
Villagers wait to be weighed after picking. Photo by reporter Wang Yi
"Standardized honeysuckle has the characteristics of stable growth, high yield and good quality, and can grow for 25 to 30 years after planting." Liu Juyong, a member of the Party Committee of Zhenggang Community, introduced that in order to grow honeysuckle with good quality and high efficiency, the community will invite experts and large planters to guide each year.
But at the beginning of the cooperative's establishment, only a handful of villagers were willing to plant honeysuckle.
"In the past, planting peanuts and corn only required an investment of two or three hundred yuan per acre of land, but planting honeysuckle, it cost about 4,000 yuan per acre of land, and I was still a little hesitant at first." Grower Zhuang Yancheng said.
Because he is optimistic about the market prospects of honeysuckle, in 2021, Zhuang Yancheng will contract more than 10 acres of land to plant honeysuckle despite his wife's opposition, and as of last year, all of them have been repaid. Talking about this year's honeysuckle harvest, Zhuang Yancheng is full of confidence.
After screening, the flower buds with high medicinal value are left. Photo by reporter Wang Yi
Now it is the peak season of honeysuckle picking, and the tender green honeysuckle clusters stand on the branches one after another, and the faint fragrance of flowers fills the air, refreshing people's hearts. In the honeysuckle planting base in Zhenggang, more than 200 villagers scattered in various fields, shuttling through the sea of flowers, skillfully picking honeysuckle.
Li Yingju brought a small bench, sat in the sea of honeysuckle, and skillfully picked off the honeysuckle buds, "Anyway, if you are idle at home, you are idle, where is not to sit, and you can still earn money by sitting here." Li Yingju said with a smile that he picked it for 3 days, and his hand speed is getting faster and faster, earning more and more day by day, and he is expected to be able to "break 100" today.
Dried flowers after drying. Photo by reporter Wang Yi
Liu Juyong introduced that each catty of dried honeysuckle can be sold for 75 yuan, much higher than corn, peanuts and other cash crops. In 2023, the output of dried flowers in the honeysuckle base of Zhenggang community will be about 12,000 catties, with an output value of about 900,000 yuan. "At the beginning, most of the villagers were still very hesitant, so we let the village cadres take the lead in planting, and then everyone saw the benefits and began to plant honeysuckle." Liu Juyong said that at present, Zhenggang honeysuckle base planting area of more than 300 acres, "April 29 began this year's picking, has produced 4,000 pounds of dried flowers, is expected to reach 1.5 million yuan this year's output value, absorbing nearly 40,000 people around the labor force, and issuing more than 80 yuan of manual picking and other expenses." ”
The spring hair is full of green branches and green, and there are gold and silver vines with one stem and two flowers. The planting of honeysuckle not only solves the problem of idle land in Zhenggang community, but also becomes a "happy flower" for villagers to get rich and increase income. In the future, Zhenggang Community Honeysuckle Cooperative will develop the honeysuckle tea and beverage industry, produce various types of honeysuckle tea and honeysuckle beverages through deep processing, and strive to create honeysuckle dry tea and honeysuckle tea beverages. At the same time, we will build a leisure and sightseeing agriculture with honeysuckle as the theme, plan to build a number of honeysuckle sightseeing and leisure bases and picking experience parks, and gradually form an integrated rural tourism model integrating sightseeing and leisure, picking experience and outdoor expansion, so as to create a comprehensive development demonstration industry and realize the organic integration of honeysuckle industry and tourism industry.