During this year's Spring Festival, zhou hai, an entrepreneur in Yanjin County, Zhaotong City, Yunnan Province, and Associate Professor Fan Jinhui of Donghua University, and other teachers have been busy with a bowl of chicken soup. Together, they are making final preparations for the export of this chicken soup to Europe, America, Russia and other places.
Ten minutes of self-heating, you can eat a bowl of tianma black bone chicken soup with the original taste of the deep mountains. Launched in October last year, this nutritious and delicious convenience food has sold 30,000 to 40,000 copies so far. The original inspiration came from the rural revitalization team composed of multidisciplinary teachers and students of Donghua University. They help local entrepreneurs and farmers upgrade the tianma and black-bone chicken that their ancestors relied on from simple raw material supply to high value-added ecological cuisine.
Since 2005, the wisdom from Shanghai universities has helped local e-commerce to achieve a breakthrough from scratch through intellectual poverty alleviation, industrial poverty alleviation and consumption poverty alleviation, and is "flying" the industrial upgrading of rural yanjin in Yunnan. Yanjin County was awarded the title of National E-commerce into Rural Comprehensive Demonstration County in 2017 and achieved poverty alleviation in 2018.
Subverting the traditional "planting medicine" and "eating chicken", the new idea makes the local specialties not native
Tianma black bone chicken soup is a local specialty of Shiojin, and it is also an ancient medicinal food that nourishes the body. However, from the mountains of Yunnan to the consumption terminal of the city table, even if the logistics are developed today, the price of a 3-3.5 kg fresh black-bone chicken is 200 yuan / piece, almost double that of ordinary vegetable farms. How to make this "Dark Phoenix" fly out of the mountains has become a problem.
In 2005, when Donghua University and Yanjin County were officially paired to alleviate poverty, Zhou Hai, who was engaged in the cultivation and sales of characteristic Chinese herbal medicines in the local area, was the first to come to Donghua University to participate in the "Rural Revitalization Backbone Talent Training". A course jointly taught by teachers from various disciplines such as the School of Management and the School of Materials sowed a dream seed for Zhou Hai - to create a "home-grown" fist product for Yanjin County.
In 2020, in many discussions between Zhou Haihe and the teachers of Donghua University who helped him, and Fan Jinhui, an associate professor who was suspended as a deputy county magistrate in the local area, a self-heating tianma black bone chicken soup that subverted the traditional "seed medicine" and "eating chicken" was born.
"We process the highest quality gastrodia and black-bone chicken into fast food products, which not only have a shelf life of 12 months, but are also easy to transport and sell. Compared with the previous sale of raw materials, a chicken makes 6 cans of chicken soup, and the price of 50 yuan a can makes the added value of the product also become higher. Zhou Hai told reporters that there are old food customers from Shenzhen who repeatedly buy back and feel that "it is better than the soup made by chicken in the vegetable market."
In addition to the inherent high quality, it is also important to make the local specialties not native, and the external high "value" is also important.
During this year's winter vacation, Yang Shuai, deputy dean of the School of Management, and his colleagues found after field visits that "it is not only necessary to promote the ecological agricultural cuisine here to more people, but also to build a brand for The special products of Yanjin and cultivate unique competitiveness for the industry." She told reporters that changing the simple but outdated packaging of local specialties in Yanjin County has become a big homework for professional courses such as design and marketing, which is jointly planned and promoted by college experts. The "Poverty Alleviation Creative Marketing Competition" being held on campus also brainstorms from college students, not only allowing students to understand the contemporary rural industry, but also bringing youth wisdom to the development of poor areas.
A live broadcast brought 200,000 orders, and the company's e-commerce sales increased from 5% to 30%
In order to upgrade local agricultural products, it is also necessary to open up markets for local products. Last year, a live broadcast brought Zhou Hai the first big order of 200,000 yuan. In a consumer poverty alleviation activity that mobilized teachers and students of the whole school, "dean endorsement, teachers with goods, and students with heat", Liu Dongsheng, director of the Department of Business Administration of Donghua University, also "transformed" into an anchor to promote various agricultural products in Yanjin County to netizens. On the same day, the head of the Agricultural Bank of China's palm bank e-commerce just watched the live broadcast and quickly contacted Yanjin County through Liu Dongsheng.
Today, Yanjin County has cooperated with the Agricultural Bank of China to create a special poverty alleviation zone in the Agricultural Bank of China, listing more than 30 kinds of agricultural products and helping to sell nearly 500,000 yuan.
Zhou Hai also built his own "micro-shop" with the help of teachers and students of Donghua University, "Our family here can get rid of poverty as long as they plant one mu of herbs, and now the more than 200 farmers engaged in planting and breeding who cooperate with our enterprises alone have increased their annual net income from more than 3,000 yuan to more than 10,000 yuan." Zhou Hai said that there are still young people returning to their hometowns for employment, "This year I also recruited a young man in charge of e-commerce channels, and we plan to explore the original ecological 'earthy Internet celebrities' in the mountains ourselves."
Under the matchmaking of teachers of Donghua University, Yanjin County signed a cooperation agreement with Alibaba and Shanghai Guangming City Vegetable Garden to launch the rural Taobao "Thousand Counties and Ten Thousand Villages" plan to promote the two-way circulation of "online goods going to the countryside" and "agricultural products entering the city". The local government has also established the "China County E-commerce Economic Development Alliance (Yanjin Branch)" and the "China E-commerce Association Rural E-commerce Talent Training Base".
"The change of concept is the most important" to stimulate the endogenous driving force of local development
To accelerate the improvement of the industrial development and self-hematopoietic function of Yanjin County, we need not only help, but also help local farmers to "update" their concepts.
When Yang Shuai communicated with local chicken farmers, he found that the locals generally believe that the growth of black-boned chickens must exceed 8 months to have high nutritional value. But then Yang Shuai, together with food science teachers and agricultural experts, found that the weight of the black-bone chicken that grew to 5 months almost no longer increased in weight and the meat quality was more tender, which was more in line with the tastes of consumers in the Yangtze River Delta. These meticulous scientific surveys, and the resulting increase in farmers' incomes, can help locals become more receptive to scientific farming rather than experience, she said. However, she also admitted: "It will take efforts to persuade locals to change their mindset, and we are preparing more adequate market research and proposals." ”
New technologies, new channels and new modes of thinking from scratch have made many locals like Zhou Hai feel that "the change of concept is the most important" and they are more willing to actively try to innovate.
This year, Donghua University docked with traditional Chinese medicine experts to introduce the "tetraploid dandelion" planting and development project with high medicinal value and good market prospects for Yanjin County, and set up a special funding project of 200,000 yuan to promote the trial planting of 20 acres of "tetraploid dandelion". Donghua University also organized experts to provide scientific and technological support for projects such as yanjin basalt fiber research and development, with a cumulative investment of nearly 1 million yuan. Experts from the Textile College contacted Jiuyong National Culture and Creative Company to promote fireweed-related industries, and set up a special project of "Research on Fireweed Fiber Materials and Key Technologies of Spinning" to enhance the level of local industrial development.
Professor Chen Quanyuan spent five years to develop the "two pollution" treatment technology demonstration project for Yanjin, and the rural domestic garbage and sewage treatment project built in Dunhou Village, Niuzhai Township, Yanjin County, and Xiaoyan Poverty Alleviation Resettlement Site in Niutang Village, Luoyan Township, covering 21 village communities and helping more than 3,000 local people solve the problem of domestic garbage and sewage discharge.
"When I came home from vacation, I found that the street lights in my hometown were more and more installed, more and more factories were built, and the planting and breeding technology of the villagers improved very quickly." Xiao Jun, a Yanjin student majoring in applied chemistry at Donghua University, and her classmates used their vacation to introduce the colorful university life and the outside world to the students in the county. In June 2019, Donghua University sponsored Yanjin students to come to Shanghai to participate in "walking education" and broaden their horizons by walking into the classrooms of Donghua Affiliated School and the families of Shanghai students. In June 2020, students at the Second Primary School in Shuitian New District, a relocation site in Yanjin County, used the "Cloud Intelligence" tablet teaching equipment.
Author: Chu Shuting
Editor: Wu Jinjiao
Image source: Donghua University, courtesy of the interviewee