The countryside in early winter is the season of precipitation and harvest, and also ushers in the consumption season.
After entering Houzhaozhuang Village, Yincheng Street, Xiajin County, you will find a variety of cellars, including large long cellars with cotton curtains and well cellars covered with lime. There are more than 2500 sweet potato cellars, large and small, in the village.
From early September to early November each year, these cellars are gradually filled with sweet potatoes, and the storage capacity can reach 750000 tons. At this time, several sweet potato trading markets in the village also began to bustle, with traffic coming and going all over the country.
Houzhaozhuang Village is located in the old route of the Yellow River. Because people can only survive by eating widely planted sweet potatoes in difficult times, sweet potatoes have become an unforgettable memory of a generation, and now it has developed into a traditional industry with characteristics.After years of development, Houzhaozhuang Village has become a famous important origin and distribution center of sweet potato, forming a complete industrial chain from sweet potato seedling cultivation to product processing and sales.At present, nearly 400 of the 540 villagers in the village are engaged in sweet potato related industries, with a sweet potato planting area of more than 20,000 mu. Due to the limited arable land in the village and the need for rotation planting of sweet potatoes, in recent years, in March of each year, the large farmers in the village came to Langfang, Tangshan and other places in Hebei to camp with mobile houses after raising seedlings. The villagers rent land to plant sweet potatoes in those places, and then transport them back to the village for storage and trading after harvest.
Zhao Huarui, 41, is a big sweet potato planter in Houzhaozhuang Village. His long cellar is located in the west of the village, with a semi underground structure. It is more than 200 meters long, and its top is made of concrete."This is a big cellar. I also have four small cellars. The total capacity is about 4 million jin of sweet potatoes."
The sales channels have changed, and the proportion of online sales is increasing. By searching for"Yellow River sweet potato" on various e-commerce platforms,"Houzhaozhuang Village" can be seen repeatedly. The times are changing and the market is changing."The threshold of sweet potato planting is low. After the national production has increased, the price cannot be maintained by the time difference of storage alone."In 2018, Zhao Huarui took the lead in setting up the Small Pine Potato Food Co., Ltd. in the village, and began the deep processing of dried potatoes, frozen potatoes and other products. In 2019, half of the total income of his cooperative came from the processing plant. At present, they are negotiating with a Taiwanese businessman on the production cooperation of"potato balls".
"E-commerce not only opens the sales channels, but also reduces the intermediate links. Compared with the traditional wholesale market, the revenue can increase by more than 25%." Zhao Huarui said,"We have upgraded from sweet potato planting to the whole chain of seed storage, processing and marketing. The chain has grown, and the'value' of sweet potato has increased."
In addition, 8 cooperatives and 9 family farms were set up in the village to carry out industrial operation, forming a one-stop industry of potato seedling cultivation and breeding, planting and storage, processing and sales, and logistics and transportation.At the same time, with the help of Yincheng Neighborhood Office, it actively strengthened cooperation with colleges and universities such as Dezhou University, promoted the deep processing of sweet potatoes, formed a complete industrial chain from the cultivation of sweet potato seedlings to the deep processing and sales of products, and built a typical demonstration village for industrial revitalization with the help of the Internet platform.（Reporter Deng Meiping Wang Xiaoqian）
