A road of self-upgrading for fruit growers in Linyi.

Wu Zhongding and his wife are in the orchard.

Wu Zhongding, a fruit farmer in Linqu, has won the contribution Award for Agricultural Technology extension of the National Agriculture, Animal Husbandry and Fisheries Harvest Award. He was awarded the honorary titles of "Horticulture producer", "Shanxi Top Ten Rural Science and Technology Rich Leader", "Shanxi Green Development pacesetter" and "Top Ten Farmers in Shanxi Province in Science and Technology" and other honorary titles. His orchard has been certified by China quality Certification Center and registered by Shanxi entry-exit Inspection and Quarantine Bureau. It has been identified as "National Apple Industry Technology system quality and efficiency Standard demonstration Garden" and Shanxi Province "Fruit Standardization production demonstration Garden". "Lao Wu Brand" Apple was rated as a famous trademark in Shanxi Province.

The road taken by Wu Zhongding has brought an exemplary effect to Linyi fruit growers. Lao Wu has his own way and brought out a number of followers on how to adjust himself to the market.

Ten yuan each, "Lao Wu" apples are sold for each.

When it comes to growing apples, the people who are now admired by Linyi fruit farmers are "Lao Wu" Wu Zhongding. Apples planted by others are sold by catties, while apples planted by Wu Zhongding are sold individually, and demand for each of the apples worth 10 yuan is still in short supply.

Wu Zhongding, 58, is a fruit farmer in Shangdou Village, Jiaobei Township, Linqu County. After growing apples for more than 30 years, he has grown from a layman to a nationally famous agricultural technician, and his orchard has also become a "national apple industry technology system quality and efficiency standard demonstration garden".

In recent years, fruit sales prices have fallen, and many fruit growers lament that the apple market is depressed and prices are weak. Wu Zhongding's apples are not only unaffected by the market, but their prices are getting higher and higher. Other people's apples sell for more than one yuan a jin, and Wu Zhongding's "Lao Wu" brand apples sell for 10 yuan each. The Zhongding Apple Professional Cooperative led by Wu Zhongding has 205 members, and their good apples sell for about 5 yuan a jin. Not only that, under the influence of Wu Zhongding, the apple purchase price in Jiaojiao Township is higher than that in other places, and the fruit growers in the whole township follow the old Wu Zhanguang.

On November 28, the reporter came to Jiaobei Township, which is located in the west of Linqu County. Patches of orchards and agricultural tricycles loaded with red apples can be seen everywhere along the way. A brand new asphalt road leads to Wu Zhongding's orchard. Just after noon, there was a lot of noise in the orchard. More than 50 fruit growers are talking loudly around a fruit tree. "I think we should cut this one and this one," said a man in his 40s as he rowed on the branch. Before his voice fell, he was immediately interrupted by several people around him: "that one and the middle one have to be cut off, or it will be affected in the coming year."

In the crowd, a middle-aged man with a microphone in his hand was smiling as they spoke. When he saw that everyone was almost done talking, he neatly cut a long branch from a nearby apple tree, wiped off the remaining leaves on the branch and made a whip. "everyone was right just now. This one and this one must also be cut. We must combine academic theory with practice. Pruning is directly related to the fruit of the coming year and everyone's income. "

The middle-aged man was Wu Zhongding, not very tall, wearing an inconspicuous black tweed coat with several yellow apple leaves hanging on his shoulders and back. The students here in Wu Zhongding are 56 fruit growers from various villages and towns in the county. After the training of these trainees, more than 70 youth farms from the whole province mainly came here to take part in the precise cultivation of fruit trees. This winter alone, Wu Zhongding will train more than 500 trainees here.

Cadet Wang Yinwu is a fruit farmer in Shangwang Village, Lanzi Township, Linqu County. He told the reporter that he had heard that Wu Zhongding's apples were selling well in the past, and he was still a little unconvinced. He only found the gap after he came to study. Most people always think that the more trees are planted, the more fruits they bear, the more money they can make. As a result, more fruits are worthless. "Mr. Wu doesn't have to worry about selling the fruit here. An apple costs us several jin of apples. Why? People scientifically manage the apples planted are good, big, red and sweet. When you cut it open, everyone is ice candy heart. If you think it in the market, you can sell it at a high price. I went back to apply what I learned this time to my orchard. I planted good fruit and sold it with worry! "

When I thought about it, I was worried about the difficulty of selling fruit.

Wu Zhongding began to plant apple trees in 1984. At that time, there was a 15-mu orchard in the village, but there was no fruit for more than ten years. When he was in high school, Wu Zhongding learned fruit tree planting skills from his teacher for some time. He felt that the 15-mu orchard lacked scientific management and could bear fruit by taking good care of it.

In the eyes of others who did not understand, Wu Zhongding spent more than 2700 yuan to contract the orchard in the village. After the contract, he looked everywhere for experts and invited technical experts to "diagnose" the orchard. At that time, there was a fruit mulberry station in the county (now called Linqu County Fruit Industry Development Center), and he came up almost every week to communicate with the experts in the fruit mulberry station about the orchard. With the help of experts, after pruning, ventilating and fertilizing the fruit trees, the orchard contracted by Wu Zhongding had a bumper harvest the following year. This suddenly caused a sensation in the whole village. In 1985, Wu Zhongding sold back a four-wheeled agricultural vehicle and a 14-inch color TV by planting fruit trees.

In the 1980s and 1990s, orchards increased production through a variety of fruit trees. With the growth of fruit trees, the closely planted orchards began to close. The small distance between fruit trees and leaves and branches cover each other, resulting in poor ventilation and light transmission in orchards, poor fruit coloring, and a decline in both quality and yield. In 1997, this situation led to the "difficulty in selling fruit" among fruit farmers in Linqu.

Seeing that the fruit full of trees could not be sold, Wu Zhongding was worried that his mouth was blistering. In desperation, he hired a car to load apples to Guangdong, Hebei and other places to sell. Recalling the beginning, Wu Zhongding still feels bitter in his mouth. He remembers that when he was selling apples, he was passing through Hunan. When he went there, he was transplanting rice seedlings. When he came back, he was already harvesting rice. Watching others have a bumper harvest, my heart is more and more unpleasant. Running back and forth, I can't take care of my family, and Apple can't sell at a good price. Most of the time, I can only pay for it.

When talking about this, Yang Huicai, the wife of Wu Zhongding, could not help crying. "in those years, the two of us were busy growing and selling apples, and neither of our children cared about it. When the children go to school, they don't have to pick them up or cook for them, and they go hungry all day long. Later, when the child went to junior high school, the school had a canteen to stop starving. Until now, when the eldest son talked about his short stature, he always said that we were hungry when he grew up. "

For Wu Zhongding, the biggest harvest when going out to sell fruit is to find out why it is difficult to sell fruit. When compared with others in other markets, their apples are too poor to sell at a good price at all. "other people's apples sell fast at 1.5 yuan per jin, but I sold them for 50 cents at least. The apples of the villagers in the village, no one came to buy them at all. They were rotten and smelly, and finally they all fell into the ditch. What does that mean? It shows that there is no need to sell good fruit, and no one asks for bad fruit. "

After finding the disease, Wu Zhongding began to implement variety improvement in his orchard. At the same time, he also reduced the density of orchard fruit trees from more than 80 fruit trees per mu to 30 according to the "thinning" technology popularized in the county. At that time, many people in the village thought he was stupid, and the trees that bore good fruit were willing to be sawed off. Results in the second year after thinning, the fruit trees grew gratifying, and the income per mu was the same as that before thinning; in the third year after thinning, the average yield per mu was controlled at 2500 kg, but the quality of apples was greatly improved, almost all of them were excellent apples with a diameter of more than 85 mm. Wu Zhongding, who had tasted the fruits of science and technology, began to plant fruit firmly and confidently. He has to learn all the techniques popularized in the county, and whenever he has the opportunity to go out to learn, he will go at his own expense.

Because the quality of apples is better, Wu Zhongding's apples can sell more per jin than others. At the beginning, the purchase price of other people's fruit was 1 yuan, and Lao Wu's apple merchants gave it 1.5 yuan, selling an extra 50 cents per jin, and slowly selling an extra 1 yuan or 2 yuan per catty, and then 3 yuan or 5 yuan later, until now an apple is 10 yuan. Today, his apples are sold in 38 large and medium-sized cities across the country, and demand exceeds supply every year.

Popularize scientific planting and get rich with the villagers

During the interview, Wu Zhongding repeatedly mentioned to reporters a "620" model. The "six technology integration" model is a set of apple standardized scientific management model vigorously promoted in Linqu County at present, including fruit thinning, fruit bagging, orchard recommendation, pollination to increase production, pollution-free control, laying reflective film and other six major technologies. Lao Wu himself also added two items, the integration of water and fertilizer and the management of the Internet of things to increase the content of science and technology and improve quality.

Paper film, double bags. The traditional Linyi apple is prone to the problems of dirty fruit surface and fruit color difference. When the apple first hangs the fruit, cover it with a plastic bag. This can not only protect the fruit surface, but also prevent insect pests. When the fruit grows to a certain period, a layer of opaque paper bag is covered outside the film bag, and the fruit coloring redness can be ensured by scientifically covering and taking off the bag time. This technology alone has been popularized more than 200,000 mu in Linyi County. After bagging, the quality of apples has been improved, and the price of apples per jin has been increased by 1 yuan. The thinning technology of fruit trees has transformed the 100000 mu old orchard in Linyi county, increasing the income per mu by 2000 yuan per year. Orchard recommendation technology, by planting clover in the orchard, not only enhances the soil organic matter, but also adjusts the microclimate of the orchard. And Lao Wu's integration of water and fertilizer is to add nutrient solution and organic fertilizer during irrigation to balance the nutrition of the fruit. The Internet of things observes the growth of apples with long-distance and high precision through video equipment, and carries out timely management and analysis.

Now Wu Zhongding has developed from the original idea of planting fruit trees to earn money to improve his life, and has developed into a spokesman for promoting scientific planting of fruit trees. He set up a high-standard apple field training school in his orchard, demonstrating and imparting skills to fruit farmers who came to learn from them. After several years of training, Wu Zhongding led a 100-member agricultural service delegation, set up a science and technology service network at the county, township, and village levels, and held hundreds of science and technology lectures in rural areas every year. In recent years, more than a thousand people will watch the scene in his orchard more than 20 times. A hundred-person delegation organized by non-local fruit growers came for more than 200 times. So far, Wu Zhongding has trained a total of more than 100000 people. Even fruit experts from Russia, Australia, the Philippines, Chile, the United States, Israel and other countries have come to Wu Zhongding's orchard for technical exchanges.

Wu Zhongding's high-tech Internet of things transmits new technologies and high-standard production processes to fruit tree experts and farmers all over the country through video technology. it can also realize the function of directly connecting urban residents, allowing consumers to monitor the production process throughout the process. participate in it and enjoy the idyllic fun. Lao Wu's orchard has also become a rural tourist attraction for urban residents to experience leisure.

In Wu Zhongding's own words, "Jinshan and Silver Mountain is better than a good orchard!" . The leading fruit grower in Linyi prefers to see the villagers happy when they sell apples.