From "Cattle Shepherd" to Pastoral: Wu Yiming's Cow Breeding Classic

After driving in the Wuzhong National Agricultural Science and Technology Park in Ningxia for half an hour, the pastures that "live in seclusion" in the mountains show their true appearance, and the modern pastures of Yiming Dairy in Ningxia are the "big guys": there are 12 semi-closed modern cowsheds 11 meters high and 33 meters wide; the environment in the barn is clean and equipped with side-by-side beds; more than 5000 cows live a leisurely life here.

And this is just one of the five pastures owned by Wu Yiming. From the "cowboy" who raised several cows more than a decade ago to the rancher who is now in charge of 15000 cows, Wu Yiming's development history can be described as a "living record" of the development of the local dairy industry.

Due to the large number of immigrants in Huangshawo Village, Litong District, Wuzhong City, the land in the village could not solve the problem of living, so some villagers began to raise dairy cows. In 2003, the village encountered "trouble" in the first year of raising dairy cows: although the villagers were very enthusiastic about raising cattle, they lost money at the end of the year because of their lack of farming experience.

In order to solve this problem, Wu Yiming, once a branch secretary of Huangshawo Village, led the villagers to set up a dairy association and a breeding park in 2004 to help farmers solve problems such as breeding sales through unified loans, unified feed distribution, unified epidemic prevention, unified milking, and unified sales. Wu Yiming said: "after the establishment of the association, farmers only care about raising, and they don't have to worry about anything else. At that time, the association also signed an agreement with Xia Jin and other dairy enterprises, the price was also guaranteed, and the farmers in the village also had a good life for several years. "

However, the good times did not last long. Wu Yiming still remembers the "cold winter of the dairy industry" brought about by the melamine incident in 2008. "at that time, milk prices plummeted and dairy companies did not buy them," he said. There has been a phenomenon of 'selling cattle to raise cattle' in the breeding park, and farmers can only rely on selling some of their cattle to feed other cattle. "

At a time when many dairy farmers quit in despair, Wu Yiming did the opposite, gathering cows sold by retail investors to set up pastures.

"the aquaculture park is essentially retail farming, which has been thoroughly exposed by the melamine incident. The development of the dairy industry must cooperate with large dairy enterprises, which is necessary to take the road of standardization and scale. " Wu Yiming said.

After 2009, with the improvement of the dairy market, Wu Yiming's farm became Yili's milk source base because of standardized farming and high quality milk. In the following years, he built three new pastures while the iron was hot.

Years of "glorious achievements" have also gathered a large number of "fans" around Wu Yiming. Retail investors around the ranch have placed more than 7000 cows on Wu Yiming's farm in the form of trusteeship and semi-trusteeship. Zhang Yaocai, 63, is one of them. Zhang Yaocai is an immigrant from Tongxin County, Wuzhong City. In the past 10 years, Zhang Yaocai followed Wu Yiming's steps, and the scale of breeding expanded from more than a dozen to 500 now.

"if it hadn't been for Wu Yiming, I wouldn't have had the opportunity to cooperate with big dairy enterprises, and I wouldn't have been like my old man now. He has a good grasp of the market, so he will follow him in the future! " Zhang Yaocai said.

The ranch seen by this reporter is a high-standard ranch built by Wu Yiming last year, which invested more than 100 million yuan. It can not only hold 30,000 cows, but also is equipped with modern cowsheds, automatic milking machines, and so on. It is an upgraded version of the old farm. While upgrading the hardware, Wu Yiming sends two sons to pastures in Europe and Australia every year to learn advanced foreign farming techniques and management experience.

Wu Yiming said: "although the pasture has a strong ability to resist the risks of the market, the price of fresh milk is still low in the past two years." The pasture is in the mountains, but we can't just see this small area. Only through continuous learning and upgrading can we not be eliminated. " (reporter Xu Jinyu Jin he)