The picture shows the villagers of Zhangbian Village, Yonghehui Town, Yongnian District, Handan City, Hebei Province, showing the harvest of grain. Photo by Hu Gaolei
Handan, China News Network, October 11 (Wang Tianyi, Chang Lingshan) After several days of rain, Handan, Hebei Province, ushered in sunny weather. Early in the morning, Duan Congting, a villager in Zhangbian Village, Yonghehui Town, Yongnian District, Handan City, and her family rushed to the grain field and began to harvest the grain by hand.
Duan Congting said that last year, her family's 8 acres of dryland millet produced more than 6,000 catties of millet and sold more than 40,000 yuan, "This year to see the growth of this millet, it is another bumper harvest year."
The picture shows villagers in Zhangbian Village, Yonghehui Town, Yongnian District, Handan City, Hebei Province, harvesting millet. Photo by Hu Gaolei
Yonghehui Town is located in the western part of Yongnian District, in the purple hilly area of the Taihang Mountains, with perennial drought and little rain, and has been planting dryland millet since the Tang Dynasty. The millet produced is golden in color and full of particles, which is favored by people, and is the preferred nutrition product for local residents and a good product for relatives and friends, and is known as one of the "Eight Treasures of Purple Mountain".
However, as the villagers went out to work, the local rural population decreased sharply, coupled with sales limitations, high-quality rice could not be sold at a good price, and the western mountains of Yongnian, which were known for the production of small grains, had a large area of land in the western mountains, and the traditional grain planting area shrank year by year, at the least, the millet planting area in the entire western mountainous area was less than 100 mu.
In recent years, in order to broaden the way for villagers in mountainous areas to get rich, Yongnian District has implemented the "region, enterprise, product" trinity brand strategy, listed the western mountainous areas as a small grain planting base, focused on building a high-quality millet industry cluster, given policy support such as trademark registration and quality identification, and adopted the "enterprise + cooperative + farmer" cooperation model to make the characteristic industry of dryland millet reappear.
Zhang Xiaoguang, a villager in Zhangbian Village, worked in a state-owned enterprise, and the implementation of the local rural revitalization strategy allowed him to see opportunities for rural development. In 2015, he quit his job at a state-owned enterprise and returned to his hometown to lead the masses to start planting and developing small grains such as dryland millet. He led the formation of the Yongnian District Grains Association, which provided villagers with high-quality grain seeds free of charge and purchased them at a price of 0.6 yuan to 1 yuan per kilogram above the market price, mobilizing the enthusiasm of the masses for planting.
The picture shows villagers in Zhangbian Village, Yonghehui Town, Yongnian District, Handan City, Hebei Province, packaging vacuum-packed millet for export. Photo by Zhang Li
In order to ensure the quality of millet, Zhang Xiaoguang after repeated comparative research and practice, adopts the traditional planting mode, from sowing to harvesting all manual operations, does not use herbicides, pays attention to "four hoes", so that the grain can fully absorb the unique minerals in the soil, and the millet produced completely inherits the quality of "Purple Mountain Eight Treasures" and wins market recognition. Products are not only exported to all parts of the country, but also exported to Malaysia, Australia and other countries, opening up overseas markets.
The reporter learned from the Propaganda Department of the Yongnian District Party Committee that this year's new millet has just been listed and has sold more than 100,000 catties. At present, more than 1,000 mu of dryland millet has been developed in the western part of Yongnian, which has led to the increase of income of more than 100 villagers in 13 villages. (End)
Source: China News Network