Woman Leads Villagers in Erasing Poverty through Planting Strawberries
ByZhang Hongqiu, Li Wenjie February 19, 2014
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| Lv Miaoxia (L) guides her fellow villagers in growing strawberries in the greenhouse. [Henan Women's Federation] |
Lv Miaoxia, nicknamed 'Iron Lady,' a female middle-aged migrant worker from Mengjin, a county under the administration of Luoyang, is locally well-known because she not only opened three supermarkets from scratch in Beijing through 20 years of hard work but also helped local villagers generate great economic benefits and lead prosperous lives.
Lv left Mengjin and migrated to Beijing for work in 1989. Having no money to open a store at the beginning, she moved around on a tricycle selling fruit all year round regardless of weather. Due to her honest work, she had more and more regular customers. Through her persistent efforts over the past two decades, she and her husband opened three supermarkets in Beijing with assets worth millions of yuan.
When Lv went home for Spring Festival in 2008, which was during farming's slack season, she saw many women idle about every day, which worried her a lot because villagers could not earn much simply depending on farming and lacked opportunities to make extra money. The idea of growing fruits in greenhouses then came to her mind.
Lv immediately conducted market research and found that the variety of fruit in Luoyang's market was very limited and that many are purchased from other areas. Lv investigated farms in central China's Anhui Province and east China's Shandong and Zhejiang provinces in the following two months, where she found the economic returns of growing fruit in greenhouses were much higher than growing crops. She also invited two agricultural experts to investigate Mengjin's growing conditions for greenhouse fruits and was informed that the climate and soil in Henan were more agreeable to planting greenhouse fruits than those in Shandong and that the fruit would ripen half a month earlier, boosting her determination to grow fruit in greenhouses.
But Lv's resolve was discouraged by her mother and relatives. "It's very hard for you to save up money. What happens if you invest such a large amount of money and then fail?" said her mother.
"You don't need to take the risk of doing greenhouse growing; it'll produce much less money than working in big cities," Lv's family said.
But her determination was not shaken. She decided to grow strawberries because Luoyang didn't have strawberry plantations and the strawberries sold in local markets didn't taste good.
She borrowed two million yuan (US$329,772) with the help of the local women's federation and set up 67 greenhouses to grow off-season fruits.
Lv spent three months to make all preparations in place, including leveling soil and installing water pipes, greenhouse coverings and other necessary equipment. She found it rewarding to see the strawberry seedlings grow day by day.
Lv also encountered several challenges. Most of her greenhouses collapsed or were knocked askew under an unexpected heavy snowfall in November 2009. Another time a storm ripped the roof off of her newly-established plant and the torrent washed away the strawberry seedlings in dozens of the greenhouses. But she was not defeated by these setbacks and tried her best to minimize the losses.
When Lv put her strawberries on the market ahead of the 2010 Spring Festival, her plantation was flooded with buyers and the strawberries sold out quickly.
Many villagers asked Lv for help growing strawberries after they saw her great economic gains, which inspired her to set up a cooperative to help more people increase their income. People who had enough money could contract farmlands to set up greenhouses and manage them. As for the poor, they could first lease Lv's greenhouses and then pay back the money after getting returns. All the strawberries planted by the cooperative members would be under the cooperative's unified management.
Lv also helped lead lots of people from surrounding areas to prosperity. She even lent over 100,000 yuan (US$16,481) to some university graduate village officials from Baihe, another town in Mengjin, to set up 34 greenhouses. A hearing-impaired couple, also from Baihe, set up 10 greenhouse with the help of Lv. They called their two sons, who were previously migrant workers, back to help them plant strawberries and now the family earns more than 300,000 yuan (US$49,445) every year.
In order to enhance the employment skills of the physically challenged, Lv ran special training classes to teach 150 physically challenged villagers farming knowledge and practices.
Lv established Longhao Agriculture Co., Ltd., in 2012. So far, the company has already invested more than 18 million yuan (US$2.97 million) and set up 420 strawberry greenhouses and 6 fruit-and-vegetable plantations, employing more than 1,000 local farmers including about 100 with disabilities. In addition, the company vigorously developed agricultural tourism and held a 'Strawberry Festival', attracting thousands of tourists.
Lv won many honors for her outstanding contributions in leading villagers to shake off poverty. She was elected as a deputy to Henan Provincial People's Congress in 2013. "Now my new goal is lead more people to prosperity," she said.
(Provided by Henan Women's Federation)
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