Fengdu Farmers’ Clubs project is a participatory poverty alleviation project. The project runs for three years and is funded by Carrefour Foundation. It covers three administrative villages: Honghuapo, Baiguoyuan and Qinggangping, benefiting 1000 households. The project concept is to develop productivity, increase yield, improve income, sales channels and potentially link farmers’ clubs with Chongqing Carrefour supermarket.

One of the project activities is to provide funding to young entrepreneurs and encourage them to develop their own industries in their hometown. Zhang Yun is a villager of Qing Gangping village, and was born in 1977. He has worked outside of the village for many years, but end up with the decision of going back to the hometown. He sees that Carrefour is running this project in his village and the village is different from before. Many villagers plant pepper, black potato and rice. The scale is gradually expanding. Apart from these, animal husbandry production and the village infrastructure become better. Therefore, he joins the project with high passion. With his experience of planting, he decides to use the money he earned from working outside to plant ginger and he is determined to make it as a commercial production.

The biological characteristics of ginger are that it likes a warm and moist climate, but ginger is not cold resistant, and afraid of moisture and intense sunlight. Continuous cropping is forbidden. It is better to be planted in sloping fields and the fields in shade. The porous, fertile sandy soil with thick upper layer and good water drainage is preferred. Ginger has little root system and it is not deep-rooted. Mainly in the scope of around 30 cm. The stem is a succulent root stem. Its axillary buds can continually grow for one, two, three cultivation times. It is secondary rhizome. It is dense with clumpy structure. Generally when there are higher number of plants, the ginger is bigger and its yield is higher. Ginger stems are entangled sheath into false stem, which is 70-100 cm, being erected and without branches.

Zhang Yun carefully selected ginger seeds with high quality in Baoluan Town. He chose old gingers without diseases as seed gingers which were well developed, with bright skin, fresh flesh and hard texture. They had 1-2 strong sprouts and weighed 50-75 grams. He planted the seeds on around Tomb-sweeping Day. They covered 20 mu. The project subsidized 1000 yuan to him. He became busy very quickly. Ginger likes weak acid soils which are fertile, porous, rich in organic substance and with good draining water. It requires proper amount of water as it is neither drought resistance nor moisture resistance. If it suffers from drought, its stem will wither, and it will undergrow. When it suffers from high temperature and high quantity of moisture, the impeded drainage leads to disease. As planting ginger requires great labor intensity, during busy time, Zhang Yun employs other villagers to help with the work. 

Ginger needs great amount of fertilizer. Apart from applying enough base fertilizer, manure should be applied timely. That is to say, enough base fertilizer and scientific application of manure. Ginger has a long growing season, the principle of enough base fertilizer and multiple application of manure should be kept. Therefore, the project subsidized 500 yuan to Zhang Yun to build a compost pool. Cattle manure from adjacent households was collected and stored as fertilizer which was applied to the ginger fields. In the mean time, Zhang Yun planted 20 mu Ginger Lotus. Ginger Lotus is a crop of which the leaf is like canna lily and its underground root is like ginger, but rougher. It has small amount of root hair. Its root is the main part to eat, and it is mostly produced into Jiang Ou powder (starch). Although it is not yet harvested, he has the confidence that it will have good market.

Currently he has harvested some gingers and sells them at the fair to where people from nearby villagers go. Li Henian, project manager, often organizes them to go to the study tour of nearby vegetable planting base and cooperatives in Wanzhou. He also visits wholesale markets of Chongqing with Zhang Yun for investigation, getting closer to the market, knowing about information and seeking opportunities of selling products in wholesale batches. They study and get themselves ready for making the industry bigger in the future.


Zhang Yun and his ginger field 


Project Director Siri Holmebakk visiting project, everyone sharing harvest joy with Zhang Yun 


Ginger field  


Harvesting ginger