Yunnan Mengzi: pomegranate red day

"one car is used by my wife to go to work, and I drive one car myself." Yang Hongjun said with a smile that he did not expect that with only 10 mu of pomegranate garden, he would be able to buy two cars in just three years.

Yang Hongjun, 39, is a villager of Yao Fang Village Committee of Daxin Village, Xinansuo Town, Mengzi City, Yunnan Province. In 1987, Mengzi City introduced World Bank loans to open the way for the development of local pomegranate industrialization.

With the encouragement and help of the government, Yang Hongjun's father made a bold decision to plant pomegranates in his family's 10 mu corn field. The fiery pomegranate changed the life of Yang Hongjun's family. He said: "in the past, when growing corn depended on heaven for food, the gross income of one mu of land was 1000 yuan, and it was a problem for the whole family of five to feed. After planting pomegranates, the day is booming, and one mu of land can earn more than 4,000 yuan, which can solve the problem of food and clothing. "

September is the pomegranate picking season every year. For Yang Hongjun, the joy of harvest was immediately replaced by the hardship of selling pomegranates. At that time, when the pomegranate was picked, the neighbors had to make an appointment, and several families rented a truck to transport the pomegranate to the surrounding cities to sell. In order to get a good price for pomegranate, Yang Hongjun ran as far as Lijiang, which is more than 700 kilometers away from Mengzi.

In 2009, the local government attracted investment and built nine trading markets of more than 50,000 square meters in the town of Xinansuo, and more and more pomegranate enterprises settled in Mongolia. Another company has set up a pomegranate purchasing station in Daxinzhai village. "the pomegranate Garden is only half an hour away from the purchasing station, so it is very convenient to sell." Yang Hongjun said.

Although the pomegranate was sold, Yang Hongjun found that the purchasing station had a high demand for the quality of the pomegranate. "at the beginning, most of the pomegranates I sent were unqualified and could not sell at a high price." Slowly, Yang Hongjun found the way, "pomegranates of less than 200 grams are basically not collected, and pomegranates of more than 200 grams should be classified into different grades, with different prices, and pomegranates of 350 grams to 500 grams sell for the highest price."

Yang Hongjun, who had been dealing with pomegranates for more than 20 years, realized that extensive management was no longer feasible and that it was necessary to grow high-quality pomegranates. So Yang Hongjun began to relearn how to prune pomegranate trees and how to bag fruits. After a year of study, Yang Hongjun's 10 mu pomegranate garden has taken on a new look. In 2010, the "pomegranate season" picked about 30 tons of pomegranate, an increase of nearly 30% over the original output. "because pomegranate meets the enterprise standard, you can earn 15000 yuan per mu." Yang Hongjun was in full bloom.

Yang Hongjun bought his first car in 2013. "in recent years, most families in our village have bought cars." At the end of 2015, as the pomegranate garden grew stronger and stronger, he bought a second off-road car to run the market. "next, I'm going to build a cold storage to store pomegranates and arrange the shipping time reasonably according to the annual market situation." Yang Hongjun is full of expectations for the future.

After nearly 30 years of cultivation and development, Mengzi pomegranate industry has begun to take shape. In 1987, the local pomegranate planting area was only 2480 mu, and by the end of 2015 it had reached 125000 mu, with an output of 276500 tons and an output value of 885 million yuan. "this year, pomegranate sales in the city are expected to exceed 300000 tons, benefiting about 8000 fruit farmers." Zhang Ruihua, director of the administrative committee of Mengzi Industrial Park, said.