Home \ Project News \ “Red Bayberry Action”of Huaxi Team, Haokou Township, Wulong County
Wulong Rural Micro Enterprise Development Project is funded by CITI Foundation and jointly implemented by Wulong County Poverty Alleviation and Development Office and HPP to support development of poor rural areas of Wulong County. The project is a two year project since early 2014. The project budget was USD 200,000 for 2014 and USD 150,000 for 2015. Invested into the government funded Community Development Funds was USD 50,000. The project is implemented in 6 administrative villages in Haokou Townships, Wulong County and it covers 1140 households of 29 village teams. The project draws lessons from Chongqing Wanzhou Farmers’ Clubs model to increase farmers’ income and achieved the goal of poverty alleviation through trainings and budget support.
In Haokou Township, there are rich tourism resources, the terminal of Jiangkou Hydropower Station is within Haokou Township, there are plenty of wildlife species, rich mineral resources and huge amount of planting such as local pure natural wild Laoyin tea and red bayberry.
Two years ago, Haokou Township Government provided big support to the farmers to plant red bayberry and Laoyin tea. At Huaxi Team of Haokou village where lots of red bayberries were planted, over 100 households planted around over 600 mu red bayberry. Currently Huaxi is constructing hydropower station and it is near Furongjiang big bridge. Zhuzixi naural scenery is also there. Its geographic location enjoys exceptional advantages. With such good geographic location, if the big scale red bayberry planting base can be combined with the available tourism industry, the future must be very prosperous.
Because the farmers lack planting experience, they all faced some challenges in planting red bayberry. To solve this problem, PMO collected red bayberry planting and management materials, sorted and checked them out , printed them and distributed them to the farmers. Production knowledge was explained to them, including young plants transplanting, plant trimming and pruning, fertilization management, soil management, control buds, prevention and treatment of diseases and insects, management after picking the red bayberry etc. Farming coordinator of Haokou Village Zhang Xueshu had very good experiences of planting osmanthus forest, which was similar with planting red bayberry. Therefore he trained the villagers to manage their own red bayberry forest and he planned to lead adjacent household to develop village tourism industry to improve farmers’ income, such as picking red bayberry, agritourism, organic vegetable planting and raising chicken in the forest etc.
In order to make the training more effective, Zhang Xueshu led the participants to go to the red bayberry planting base to study on the site and put the knowledge into practice. In earlier stage, form heart shape tree crown with the principle of “one trunk with three main branches”. Cut the trunk from 30-40 cm, and leave 3-4 branches which grow well and uniformly distributed as main branches. Cultivate 2-3 secondary branches on each of the main branch, the topping being sparse and the bottom being dense. In later stage, reduce extra branches through branch pulling and pruning to enable the main branch and secondary branches to stretch equally so that they can get sufficient sunshine. The farmers said they would do trimming and pruning, branch pulling and supporting according to the training later to help red bayberry grow better.
Some farmers were not confident to their trimming techniques. Zhang Xueshu said, he would go to the village to provide guidance to them. He was always there in case of any requirements from the farmers. The work of PMO was to assist with the work, print more technical materials, help farmers to improve their knowledge, organize them to discuss management techniques, study development direction and make the red bayberry forest of Hua Xi Team be famous in Wulong.
