Lead
Adhering to the concept of natural farming, Qianyi Agriculture has built a set of planting standard systems for seed selection, fertilization, weeding and insect control, reclaimed a total of 15,000 acres of ecological planting cultivated land in 12 bases in six provinces, and formed a "three-industry integration" model integrating grain planting and primary processing, leisure and cultural tourism, and zero-added food deep processing, and has won a number of national, provincial and ministerial honors, becoming a pioneer in building China's assured food brand.
Text / Wang Song, Wang Zhi, Peng Yongbo
In 2008, Li Mingpan resigned from a high-paying job in mobile phone chip design due to health reasons, and returned to his hometown of Nanyang Village, Henan Province to found Qianyi Agriculture (Hubei) Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Qianyi Agriculture"), starting an agricultural entrepreneurial journey without pesticides, chemical fertilizers, herbicides and food additives. After 13 years of continuous exploration, Qianyi Agriculture adheres to the concept of natural farming, builds a set of planting standard systems related to seed selection, fertilization, weeding and insect control, reclaims a total of 15,000 acres of ecological planting cultivated land in 12 bases in six provinces, and forms a "three-industry integration" model integrating grain planting and primary processing, leisure and cultural tourism, and zero-added food deep processing, and has won a number of national, provincial and ministerial honors, becoming a pioneer in building China's assured food brand.
However, with the rapid development of the ecological agriculture market, Qianyi agriculture is also facing pressure from many sides. On the one hand, some agricultural enterprises have entered the field of ecological planting, and the market competition is becoming increasingly fierce, on the other hand, it is more difficult to obtain fan traffic, and the cost of customer acquisition is gradually increasing. How can Qianyi Agriculture maintain the dominant position of natural farming methods, and how can it further explore the development direction of the "integration of three industries" model? These are the questions that Li Mingpan, founder and CEO of Qianyi Agriculture, needs to focus on in the future.
Give up high wages and join agriculture
"Whether the food in the restaurant is healthy or not, let Li Mingpan taste it. This is a joke that colleagues often ridicule Li Mingpan, and it is also a true portrayal of Li Mingpan's gastrointestinal condition. In 2001, after graduating from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Li Mingpan began his career in mobile phone chip design, and in the eighth year of work, he suffered from serious gastrointestinal diseases. In the first half of 2008, a more severe episode of ulcerative enteritis left Li Mingpan in so much pain that he could not even work properly. At that time, Li Mingpan realized that it was difficult for him to adapt to the intense and stressful work, and he had to make changes in his diet. As a college student from the countryside, Li Mingpan has always had rural feelings, yearning for pastoral life, and also wants to make a career in agriculture. In 2008, Li Mingpan ended his mobile phone chip design career and returned to his hometown Nanyang countryside to recuperate.
During the period of returning to his hometown to recuperate, by chance, Li Mingpan met An Jinlei, who practiced the "natural farming method" in Hengshui, Hebei Province, and found that the ingredients he planted had a natural taste, and he had no gastrointestinal discomfort after eating. After a few days of experience and communication at An Jinlei's house, Li Mingpan was attracted by natural farming methods, "no chemical fertilizers, no pesticides, no herbicides, to maintain the balance between crops, animals, and microorganisms", these planting tips learned from An Jinlei were firmly remembered by Li Mingpan. After returning to Nanyang, Li Mingpan noticed that the people's demand for original and high-quality agricultural products was getting stronger and stronger, while there was a shortage of healthy and green agricultural products in the market. At the beginning of 2009, Li Mingpan withstood pressure from many parties and founded Qianyi Agriculture with his wife Zhou Yuan. An agricultural enterprise dedicated to original ecological cultivation and building a brand of assured food in China was officially born. The Qian hexagram and the benefit hexagram in the Book of Changes say: "There are mountains in the earth, humility", "wind and thunder, benefit", and "humility and benefit" agriculture gets its name from this.
As a native of the countryside, Li Mingpan has been very familiar with agricultural production activities such as farming, harvesting, and selling since he was a child. After many investigations, Li Mingpan decided to experiment with natural farming in his hometown of Nanyang. Unexpectedly, this action was immediately met with strong opposition from his parents, who could not accept that their proud son would farm the same land as them, and Li Mingpan's planting plan in his hometown in Nanyang ended in failure. In the autumn of 2009, Li Mingpan learned that his father-in-law's hometown of Longgan Lake in Huangmei County, Hubei Province, had 108 acres of rural collective land that could be transferred, so he contracted the first experimental plot of Qianyi Agriculture. Taking advantage of the autumn rain, Li Mingpan was ready to sprinkle the wheat seeds directly into the cultivated land, and Brother Wang, who invited the helper, said to Li Mingpan: "We must mix the wheat seeds with pesticides, and if we don't mix pesticides, the wheat seeds will definitely be eaten up by insects and birds." Li Mingpan insisted on his choice: "I came back to experiment with natural farming methods, and mixing pesticides went against the original intention." At Li Mingpan's insistence, more than 8,000 catties of wheat seeds were scattered to the experimental farmland, and then thousands of sparrows and turtle doves were really attracted to steal the wheat seeds. Despite the use of fireworks, firecrackers, etc., to drive away the birds, 108 acres of wheat fields were eventually destroyed. Faced with this situation, Li Mingpan humbly asked Brother Wang, who is experienced in planting, for remedial measures, and finally decided to plant rice in this cultivated land.
In 2010, a land contract dispute quietly followed. With the increase in the price of local land contracting, the original land contractor contracted the cultivated land of Longgan Lake to others, resulting in the "one daughter and two marriages" of the cultivated land. As a foreigner, Li Mingpan planted rice head-on, and at the same time asked the relevant departments to mediate the dispute. After all kinds of twists and turns, the dispute was finally resolved, and the natural farming method was also highly recognized by the local government, and Li Mingpan was more determined to start his own agricultural business.
The planting industry is beginning to take shape
In 2011, with the increase in the planting cost of the Longgan Lake experimental field, the initial capital of hundreds of thousands of start-ups quickly bottomed out, and Li Mingpan had to start borrowing money from everywhere. Soon, Brother Wang, who started a business together, quit halfway, and the temporary workers in the busy farming season collectively asked for a wage increase, so Li Mingpan had no choice but to call his family, including his parents, to help with the planting.
In the summer of 2012, Li Mingpan drove a van to the cooperative community to deliver rice when he saw a newspaper reporter arguing with the community property. To lighten the mood, he took some of his own melons from the van and invited them to taste them. The sweet melon and Li Mingpan's entrepreneurial experience aroused the curiosity of the newspaper reporter, and soon an interview entitled "IT engineer with an annual salary of 300,000 yuan resigns and returns to the countryside" was published on the front page of Chutian Jinbao. Subsequently, "Hubei Daily" and Hubei TV followed up one after another, and for a time Li Mingpan and his Qianyi agriculture became a hot spot in Hubei media.
At the end of September 2012, Jiangxi Satellite TV also paid attention to Li Mingpan's entrepreneurial story and invited him to the "Deep Observation" program to tell his entrepreneurial journey. After the program was recorded, a video titled "The Natural Farming Road of IT Engineers" began to be widely spread on the Internet and attracted more attention. A Liu Jushi from Hangzhou was very moved after seeing Li Mingpan's entrepreneurial story, and immediately contacted Li Mingpan to buy all his rice at the original price and donate it to Faxi Temple. The more than 300,000 yuan from the sale of rice solved Li Mingpan's financial dilemma.
In the autumn of 2013, the construction of an industrial development zone was launched near Longgan Lake, and the surrounding environment of Qianyi Agricultural Experimental Field became worse and worse. Li Mingpan realized that the cultivated land in Longgan Lake could no longer meet the planting requirements of natural farming methods, so he had no choice but to give up this planting base that had been cultivated for four years. In the blink of an eye, on the National Day, Li Mingpan took his family to visit the Sizu Temple in Huangmei County, Hubei Province. Passing through the foot of Kuzhu Mountain, he was attracted by the surrounding golden crops and flowing mountain spring water, and felt that this was an ideal place for natural farming. After many consultations with local farmers, Li Mingpan contracted a large area of cultivated land at the foot of Kuzhu Mountain, and adopted the method of cooperative planting with farmers, continuing the cultivation path of natural farming.
After many cultivation experiments at the Kuzhu base, Li Mingpan gradually explored a set of standard systems for natural farming (see Figure 1). In terms of crop selection, we insist on cultivating old seeds, selecting Yunxiang Gongmi, Zixiang glutinous and other varieties in the deep mountains of Jiujiang, Jiangxi, and using old seeds such as soybeans and corn sent by Master An Jinlei, and always adhere to reliable seed selection channels. In terms of cultivated land fertility, we insist on not using chemical fertilizers, and use natural organic fertilizers such as milk vetch green manure, rapeseed cake fertilizer, and livestock manure for cultivation to ensure that the humus content of cultivated land meets the standard, the soil is loose and the crop root system is developed. In terms of field weeding, we insist on not using herbicides, developing deep-water weeding control technology, using mechanical weeding, and skilled manual weeding to ensure the orderly growth of crops. In terms of pest control in the field, we insist on not using pesticides and follow the laws of the natural ecological chain to maintain the ecological balance between spiders, frogs, birds and insects. Under the implementation and promotion of this set of standard natural farming methods, the rice yield of Qianyi Agriculture has gradually increased from the initial yield of more than 300 catties per mu to more than 600 catties per mu, although the yield is only more than half of the conventional planting yield, but this has been in line with the standard planting yield of natural farming methods, and has successfully obtained the highest standard of organic certification for domestic planting.
With the continuous expansion of the planting area of Kuzhu base, Li Mingpan slowly found that the quality of agricultural products planted by cooperative farmers had declined, so he decided to change the measurement method based on area and output, and build a management system of "farmer subcontracting + company supervision". The first is record management, including regular field inspection records, irrigation and weeding records, crop growth status records, etc. The second is monitoring and management, using high-precision sensors and intelligent terminals of the Internet of Things to collect real-time data remotely online to achieve real-time monitoring of production ecological environment data. The third is inspection management, in the form of "flight inspection" and "field political commissar", the company's planting department professionals are regularly assigned to the field to inspect the whole planting process. Fourth, the assessment management, sign a contract with cooperative farmers, limit the yield per mu shall not exceed 650 catties, and the excess part will not be purchased, and at the same time, the pesticide residue detection will be strictly implemented, and the purchase will be based on quality.
In the autumn of 2014, a 300-acre paddy field of a cooperative farmer in Kuzhu Base was infested with rice planthoppers. Based on past experience, paddy fields that have been treated with chemical fertilizers or herbicides are susceptible to this pest. Li Mingpan immediately sent the staff of Qianyi Farm to take samples of the soil and rice ears in the field. Although the test results did not show any pesticide residues, it was found from the weeding records that the labor cost of weeding was significantly lower than that of other experimental fields, and it was very likely that herbicides were used illegally. In the end, Li Mingpan decided to sell this batch of rice at the regular market price of conventional rice, and Qianyi Farm lost nearly 1 million yuan.
In the following years, through Li Mingpan's continuous efforts, the planting concept of Kuzhu base has been increasingly improved, the planting standards and management system have been continuously refined, and in 2019, it was selected as the Hubei Provincial Ecological Agriculture Planting Standardization Base by the Hubei Provincial Bureau of Technical and Quality Supervision.
The cultural tourism industry is the icing on the cake
After more than five years of development, the natural farming method of Qianyi Farm has become more and more stable and perfect, Li Mingpan believes that the time is ripe to expand the planting base, and began to investigate the cultivated land suitable for natural farming in other places. At the end of 2014, the magistrate of Qichun County, Huanggang City, Hubei Province, who is mainly engaged in agriculture, came to Huangmei County for a meeting. After a four-hour exchange with Li Mingpan, the county magistrate believes that the natural farming model of Qianyi Farm is very much in line with the rural revitalization needs of Qichun County. So, he selected four pieces of cultivated land from Qichun County that were most in line with natural farming methods, and took Li Mingpan's team to visit them one by one, and finally selected a piece of cultivated land in Zhengjiashan Village, which is located at the foot of Dabie Mountain, which is surrounded by mountains on three sides, with abundant spring water, an independent and controllable environment, and more importantly, the local village committee vacated the idle Zhengjiashan Primary School for Qianyi Farm.
With the launch of the planting base in Qichun County, the total output of Qianyi agriculture has increased significantly. At this time, how to sell agricultural products has become a new challenge for Li Mingpan. In order to solve the sales problem, Li Mingpan visited the front line of the market many times, and the most frequently asked question was: "Is it really not using pesticides?" and "Can you really grow food without chemical fertilizers?" At this time, Li Mingpan realized that it is difficult to gain the trust of customers only by advertising and verbal explanations, and it is necessary to let everyone go into the farmland and experience the feelings in person in order to enhance the trust of customers. The construction of the rural Lintian B&B was launched. At the beginning of 2015, with the help of Tan Gangyi, deputy dean of the School of Architecture and Urban Planning of his alma mater, Li Mingpan transformed Zhengjiashan Primary School into an ecological cottage based on bamboo elements, and named it "Humility Valley" with the meaning of "respecting heaven and cherishing things, and being humble like a valley". With a total reception capacity of nearly 100 people, Humility Valley has moved eating, sleeping, leisure and entertainment, and rural tourism to the side of the cultivated land, allowing customers to witness spiders, frogs, and even salamanders and other animals in the fields catching pests, and listening to the feelings of surrounding farmers about the natural farming methods of Qianyi Agriculture, and using the country house experience to dispel customers' doubts about natural farming methods.
With the increasing number of visitors to Humility Valley, Li Mingpan tasted the sweetness of the countryhouse to improve customer trust, and he decided to promote the countryhouse model to more planting areas. Changzhi, Shanxi Province, is the main millet growing area of Qianyi Agriculture, and the team transformed the courtyard house next to the millet planting field in Langshuyuan Village into a three-hole backing kiln. The cave is based on the theme of the villagers and the culture of the neighbors, and is named Xiangsheli. With a total reception capacity of nearly 30 people, the company moved farming parent-child, autumn harvest picking, and canyon medicine collection to the vicinity of the millet planting base, so that customers could experience the charm of natural farming at the foot of Taihang Mountain.
In order to further increase the sales of Qianyi Agriculture's agricultural products, Li Mingpan began to think about how to tap the potential of the two homestays in Humility Valley and Xiangsheli, and convey the scene of natural farming to more potential customers. After many discussions, Li Mingpan decided to implement a high-quality membership system and give free homestay experience to customers who purchase a certain amount. Dozens of days later, the Valley of Humble Heart, Xiangsheli and the surrounding areas began to be lively. More and more people bring their family and friends to experience the fun of the field, and even non-member customers come to experience the natural farming journey at their own expense. As a result, the cost of customer acquisition of Qianyi Agricultural Farm has gradually decreased, and the sales volume of agricultural products has also increased.
With the continuous expansion of the planting base, coupled with the construction and daily maintenance of the humble valley and the Xiangsheli, the cost of Qianyi agriculture is getting higher and higher. In order to solve the financing problem, Li Mingpan had to turn his attention to social channels. In October 2015, Li Mingpan launched an online crowdfunding campaign on the WeChat public account of Qianyi Agriculture, in return for the equivalent value of food in the future for a period of time, and provided free living in Humility Valley and Xiangsheli for a few days and future profit dividends, and completed the crowdfunding goal of 3 million in just two days. This also made Li Mingpan pleasantly surprised to find that the natural farming method planting model of Qianyi Farm has been highly recognized by the society.
With the further fermentation of the entrepreneurial story of Qianyi Agriculture, partners from agriculture, finance, media, e-commerce and other fields have joined Qianyi Agriculture. Among these people are farmers with half a lifetime of planting experience, graduates from professional classes, reporters who have reported Li Mingpan's deeds, and like-minded people who appreciate Li Mingpan's natural farming methods. Li Mingpan also recruited some young people who yearn for rural life with the help of public platforms such as WeChat public account and Sina Weibo to join the Qianyi agricultural team in the form of volunteers for a short time. By the end of 2015, Qianyi Agriculture had grown from a six-person family team to nearly 200 people, including 50 full-time employees, 30 part-time employees, and more than 100 temporary agricultural personnel.
The processing industry has reached a new level
In the summer of 2016, a sudden rainstorm caused almost no harvest at the Qichun base, and the Zhengjiashan village where the base is located was also damaged by flooding. Li Mingpan immediately posted a disaster relief campaign on the WeChat public account, and donated all the sales funds of more than 40,000 yuan to local villagers. The encounter at the Qichun base made Li Mingpan realize the destructive power of meteorological disasters, and also made him realize that the planting base of Qianyi Agriculture must be expanded to more provinces to disperse the meteorological risks of crops. In the following years, after inspecting the advantageous crop producing areas, Li Mingpan successively developed the base of Fangxian in Hubei, the base of Huangmei Temple in Hubei, the base of Mudanjiang in Heilongjiang, the base of Keshan in Heilongjiang, the base of Dengzhou in Henan, the base in Xichuan in Henan, the base in Chengde in Hebei, the base in Shangzhuang in Shanxi, and the base in Xishuangbanna in Yunnan, and the planting area also increased from the initial 108 mu to 15,000 mu, forming a planting network of 12 bases in six provinces. However, the expansion of the planted area did not lead to a significant increase in profits. The planting cycle of crops planted by natural farming method is long, the cost is high, and the market price of crops is generally low, and the increase in planting scale cannot reverse the dilemma of low profits.
At the end of September 2016, Li Mingpan held the annual summary meeting of Qianyi Agriculture in Humility Valley. The marketing staff reflected that customers always ask whether there are deep-processed products of agricultural products, and everyone brainstormed on this issue on the spot: the broken rice left over from milling rice can be processed into maltose, glutinous rice can be made into rice wine, sesame seeds can be steamed into sesame balls, and soybeans can be made into yuba, soybean oil skin and soy sauce...... A series of proposals emerged at the meeting. After the meeting, Li Mingpan realized that these suggestions were an excellent plan for the deep processing of agricultural products, and then established Hubei Huangmei Weijian Food Co., Ltd., registered two brands of "Jianqi" and "Xiangchou", and obtained 10 million funds through equity crowdfunding, and the business extended to the planting of primary processing and zero-added food deep processing. With the continuous enrichment of crop varieties in the planting base, and in order to further expand the field of deep processing of agricultural products, Li Mingpan has successively reached cooperation with Nanyang Qianrui Agricultural Co., Ltd., Hubei Fangxian Shiyi Agriculture and Forestry Technology Co., Ltd., and Shanxi Kangliang Ecological Agriculture Co., Ltd. The products have expanded from the initial rice, stone-ground flour, millet, beans, etc. to Fangxian rice wine, nine steamed and nine tanned sesame balls, soybean oil skin, soy sauce, bean curd, maltose, millet vinegar, fresh soy sauce and other zero-additive deep-processed products (see Figure 2), and the overall profit level of Qianyi Agriculture has been greatly improved.
With the continuous promotion of deep processing of agricultural products, Qianyi Agriculture has expanded from the initial 8 staple food products to more than 50 deep-processed agricultural products, and the sales channel has once again become a bottleneck for the development of Qianyi Agriculture. After many discussions with the team, Li Mingpan decided to use self-media to carry out brand communication and use e-commerce to drive product sales. At the end of 2016, Li Mingpan took Qianyi agricultural products to participate in the 2016 micro+ character selection of "Jinba - Chuangfuhui" held in Beijing. After sharing entrepreneurial stories, roadshows, and on-site defenses, he stood out from 264 entrepreneurs and wealth creators, won the top five of the year, and attracted the attention of many investment companies. At the end of 2017, Li Mingpan once again represented Qianyi Agriculture to participate in CCTV's "Entrepreneurial Heroes" and successfully advanced, becoming the only agricultural entrepreneurship project in Hubei Province selected for CCTV's final performance. In 2018, a 17-minute video "A Bowl of Millet Porridge Worth 3 Million" was widely circulated on the Internet. Qianyi Agriculture's sales have increased significantly, especially the millet in the Changzhi base in Shanxi Province has become an Internet celebrity product. After several years of media publicity and interaction, Li Mingpan believes that the time is ripe to expand sales, and decides to hold the 2019 "Double 11" discount festival on the four major platforms of WeChat Mall, Jingdong, Taobao and Tmall. Through a series of activities such as sending coupons, flash sales, full discounts, and giveaways, more than 3 million sales were recorded on the same day.
The new crown epidemic that arrived in early 2020 affected Qianyi Agriculture, but Li Mingpan still donated more than 700,000 yuan of materials to the Red Cross Society of Huangmei County. In April 2020, after the epidemic situation in Hubei was temporarily eased, after more than half a month of planning and screening, Qianyi Agriculture stood out from thousands of enterprises in Huanggang City, and participated in the "Hubei Restart, Shake to Help - Aid Hubei Recovery Plan" initiated by the Ministry of Commerce, Xinhua News Agency, Cyberspace Administration of China, Department of Agriculture, Douyin and Hubei Huanggang, and became one of the seven enterprises selected for the Douyin live broadcast room. Liu Zhongzhong, deputy mayor of Huanggang City, singer and producer Yang Kun, and Douyin experts Qi Qi Qi jointly brought goods for the live broadcast of Qianyi Agriculture. On the 18th, the number of online viewers in the live broadcast room was nearly 100,000, and more than 30,000 catties of Jianqi Changxiangsi rice were sold. With this experience, Li Mingpan took his collapsed building Xiaomi to bid from more than 1,000 products that month, and participated in Li Jiaqi's CCTV news live broadcast room "Helping Hubei" special session, setting a sales record of selling 20,000 orders in 5 minutes.
After seeing the sales miracle of the self-media platform, Li Mingpan decided to implement the all-staff MCN model from 2021, and led the team to carry out live broadcasts of planting bases and processing front-line on WeChat public account, Taobao, Xiaohongshu, Douyin and other platforms. In the same year, it reached a long-term cooperation intention with Hunan Satellite TV Mango TV, and carried out live broadcasts of natural farming methods on the Xiaomang platform from time to time. Qianyi Agriculture's sales soon entered a new level, with annual sales exceeding 60 million yuan in 2021. After years of media publicity and precipitation, Qianyi Agriculture has been more and more recognized by the society by virtue of its original ecology and high-quality reputation, and has successively reached welfare gift packages and agricultural product supply relationships with many customers such as China Mobile, China Merchants Bank, Metro, etc., and further enriched its sales channels.
With the increasing maturity of Qianyi's agricultural sales channels, Li Mingpan decided to continue to extend the industrial chain and expand the business field from grain planting and agricultural product processing to the forefront of the market. At the beginning of 2022, a "Xiangchou" breakfast restaurant with Qianyi agricultural products as ingredients opened near Baotong Temple in Wuhan, which was favored by surrounding residents.
epilogue
After 13 years, from Longgan Lake to 12 bases in six provinces, from a six-person family team to a young team of more than 150 people, from natural farming to the integration of three industries, from raising funds everywhere to declining many venture capitals, Li Mingpan has built Qianyi Agriculture into a "three-industry integration" enterprise integrating grain planting and primary processing, leisure and cultural tourism, and zero-added food deep processing (see Figure 3). As of May 2022, Qianyi Agriculture has reached strategic cooperation agreements on targeted poverty alleviation with 13 administrative villages, achieved more than 100,000 employments, and driven more than 500 households out of poverty and become rich. Li Mingpan has also won many honors such as the May Fourth Youth of Hubei Province, the Top Ten Farmers of Hubei, the First China Outstanding New Farmer, and the Wisdom of China.
In the next three to five years, Li Mingpan plans to develop the infant food industry and build a brand of infant food rice noodles. At the same time, in order to obtain better arable land and lower labor costs, Li Mingpan set his sights on Thailand and Myanmar. However, with the rise of domestic awareness of the consumption of original ecological agricultural products, many enterprises have begun to enter the ecological agriculture market, such as COFCO and New Hope Group have carried out ecological planting. At the same time, most agricultural enterprises have laid out online sales channels, grabbing market traffic has become the norm, and the cost of gaining customer trust is getting bigger and bigger.
About the Author | Wang Song (Corresponding Author): Lecturer, School of Economics and Business Administration, Central China Normal University;
Wang Zhi: Professor, School of Economics and Business Administration, Central China Normal University;
Peng Yongbo: Master student, School of Economics and Business Administration, Central China Normal University.
Editor-in-Charge | Zhou Yang([email protected])
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