Entrepreneur brings fortune to farmers by promoting cultivation of winter potatoes

Shao Zongfu, an entrepreneur in southwest China’s Yunnan Province, has brought wealth to local farmers by promoting the planting of winter potatoes and the application of agricultural technologies in cooperation with the Yunnan Academy of Agricultural Sciences (YAAS).

Shao Zongfu checks the growth progress of potatoes planted in Jietou town, Tengchong city, southwest China’s Yunnan Province. (Photo courtesy of the interviewee)

Shao, a native of Jietou town, Tengchong city of Yunnan, returned to his hometown to set up a vegetable planting cooperative to expand the sales channels for vegetables in 2014 after leaving a comfortable job in the e-commerce industry.

Shao has built a pollution-free production base with an area of 10,000 mu (about 666.7 hectares). Meanwhile, seven types of pollution-free agricultural products in his cooperative have been certified.

After finding that many farmlands were left vacant during the winter season, Shao decided to grow winter potatoes there to help farmers to further increase their incomes.

But he faced challenges as the town had never planted potatoes on a large scale before and so he did not know how best to choose a suitable potato variety.

Things changed when Shao learned that YAAS had been promoting the planting of a potato variety that it developed, dubbed “Yunshu 304,” which is suitable for producing potatoes that can in turn be processed into chips. Besides, the academy signed a contract with a large potato chip processing plant to purchase the Yunshu 304 potatoes.

Shao encouraged 70 households in his cooperative to start trial planting on 150 mu of land in December 2017. He found that the average output value of the potato variety reached 1,466 yuan (about $230.5) per mu, higher than that of rapeseed.

Impressed by the promising results, Shao then invited experts from YAAS to offer training courses for the farmers, in which they introduced different planting techniques to potato growers, helping them increase the germination rate of the potato variety to as high as 90 percent, as well as providing tips for frost prevention and producing potatoes that are more well-suited for processing into potato chips.

Between 2018 and 2020, Shao’s cooperative organized eight separate training courses that provided training for more than 4,000 farmers in all.

Using standardized planting techniques, 130 farming households in the cooperative planted potatoes on over 850 mu of farmland in 2018. After successfully cultivating the tubers, the average yield reached 1.5 tonnes per mu, with the highest yield topping 3.1 tonnes per mu.

Shao has also worked with experts from YAAS to develop higher-quality potato seeds of the Yunshu 304 variety in northwest China’s Gansu Province.

In 2018, he sowed potato seeds cultivated in Gansu on 300 mu of farmland, which were later proven to have a higher germination rate and a better yield compared with those bred in Yunnan. One year later, Shao’s cooperative planted 2,300 mu of potatoes with the seeds bred in Gansu. With an average yield of 1.6 tonnes per mu and an output value of 3,600 yuan per mu, the planting of these potatoes generated over 7 million yuan in income for local growers.

Last year, the cooperative was comprised of 510 individual household members, helping more than 1,200 villagers from 22 villages and communities in the town to boost their earnings.

Liu Guozheng, a local farmer, joined the cooperative in 2017. “The cooperative offers seeds and introduces planting techniques, making it easier for me to plant potatoes,” Liu said.

Much to his surprise, the cooperative also covers fees upfront, such as the agricultural materials used by farmers in advance of planting, and then deducts these costs from the eventual proceeds raised from the sale of their potatoes. This approach not only helps to relieve financial burdens on local villagers engaged in the planting of potatoes, but also goes a long way to spur their motivation during the growing season.

“My family planted 7 mu of potatoes last year, which generated an income of nearly 30,000 yuan,” Liu said.

“Experts’ guidance is essential for each step of planting potatoes, including the selection of seed varieties, seed breeding, planting and the management of potatoes,” Shao said.