Planting big dreams in small grapes

In 2019, after a year of exchanges with the US Department of Agriculture's Fresno City Research Center, Bai Yang gave up the opportunity to study in the United States and returned to mainland China to plant grapes. Three years later, Bai Yang, born in 1985, now has three vineyards in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region with six partners of the same age, and became the “White General” of Nanning Xiangsi Grape Agricultural Technology Co., Ltd.

Located in Guangxi, China's southern Xinjiang, there are many vineyards, and there are many fruit farmers who grow grapes. But the practice and concept of 7 kinds of post-85 college students who grow grapes, such as Bai Yang, feels "very trendy", high-tech, food safety, Modern agriculture, micro-enterprise support... The hot words that people are paying attention to now, this young company can reflect.

In the summer of August, the 12-acre "Xianjing Grape" plantation located in the suburb of Nanning, Guangxi, was covered by transparent sheds. In the walking garden, the vines with staggered branches swept over the head from time to time. It is hard to imagine their growth. High-tech close care. IoT devices such as sensors are installed in the center of the vineyard. If the humidity of the vineyard is monitored for more than 80% of the air for a week, the grape administrator will be alerted to prevent diseases such as gray mold. If the temperature is monitored to be close to 35 degrees Celsius, the system will automatically turn on the spray to prevent sunburn.

In addition to this system, Bai Yang and the partners also introduced “cloud technology” to simultaneously manage vineyards located in different cities by means of information technology. From 2019, when a farmer knocked on the land to rent, and now the business prototype has emerged, everyone has a good idea about the future development of the company.

“Future agriculture will develop in scale and intensification”, and innovation and technology are in line with the development needs of enterprises. Zhang Yanhui, 28, one of Bai Yang’s partners, said. Among the 3 orchards in total, more than 200 mu of Wuming grape plantations will be developed on a large scale. In the future, everyone hopes to establish a three-dimensional large-scale agricultural estate, with grape cultivation as the core, extending to the fields of winemaking or grape grooming.

In the early August of 2019, it was the grape market that was sold all over the place. The grapes produced by Bai Yang in their orchard were sold in the middle and late June. - "The price of grapes in the morning market is high and sold well." Bai Yang introduced. The realization of the grape "morning market" benefits from the two-year-old technology of the grape. According to Bai Yang, this is an advantage and guarantees the company's income.

“Two-year-old technology, variety of grape varieties”, Bai Yang and reporters count the development advantages of young companies. They will also continue to work with the local Academy of Agricultural Sciences to develop other high-quality varieties of two-year-old technology with the model of “enterprise + research unit”. “It must be quality,” Bai Yang stressed.

Although the business has just started, Bai Yang and the partners insist on the high quality of the products. "You can't make unscrupulous merchants and use medicine to make fruit. Within a reasonable profit range, you can do that profit, and there is no need to speculate."

The Chinese government encouraged college students to start businesses a few years ago, but in reality, there are not many cases in which college students succeed in starting a business and continue to make profits. Bai Yang also knows the difficulty of college students starting a business. “Several college students go to the door to rent, who will believe that they are doing business.”

The reason why it succeeded was that, in addition to “continuous persistence”, Bai Yang believed that it was “lucky” to catch up with China’s big car to support the development of small enterprises. Regardless of whether it was the initial registration of the company or the relevant procedures for renting land, the local government departments gave timely assistance as a university enterprise with scientific and technological innovation.

“It is good to finance small and medium-sized enterprises without special channel loans,” he said. “Many innovative ideas are generated in small enterprises.” Bai Yang supports the state to increase support for small and micro enterprises.

Today, the company's grapes are getting better and better. The first year of the grape market, the one-and-a-half-month sales period; the second year sales period of about 27 days; 14 to 15 days this year, the grapes have been sold. However, Bai Yang’s parents still oppose entrepreneurship because it is “unstable.”

In this regard, Bai Yang cites the words of the famous Chinese host Bai Yansong to describe his feelings. "Now it is painful and happy."