Tongliang, Chongqing: One silkworm, one mulberry industry, one industry paving a “new Silk Road” for rural revitalization
Around Grain Rain, it is when the mulberries are ripe. In Damiao Town, Tongliang District, the annual mulberry picking festival is also ushered in. In Sanpin Village and Shixing Village, tourists walked through the mulberry forests with hand-held baskets. Strings of plump, red-purple and shiny mulberries were hung on the branches.
Damiao, which has always had a tradition of growing mulberry trees and raising silkworms, is the town in Tongliang where the most mulberry trees and silkworms are planted. In recent years, Damiao Town has focused on sericulture in promoting rural revitalization: from the deep processing of silkworm cocoons and mulberries to the cultivation and promotion of mulberry bacteria, it has vigorously developed the entire sericulture industry chain, promoted the integrated development of agriculture, culture, sports, business and tourism, and realized the collective economy and Increase the income of local people.
“Sangpaoer” embarks on the road of integrating agriculture, culture, business and tourism
Sanpin Village is also the largest village in Damiao Town planting mulberry trees and raising silkworms, accounting for one-third of the number of silkworms raised in the town. The village’s mulberry garden area reaches 2,000 acres, accounting for two-thirds of the town.
However, traditional sericulture is greatly affected by market fluctuations. In the early 21st century, when local mulberry planting and sericulture were at their peak, the town could produce more than 10,000 seeds per year. A few years ago, there were only eight or nine hundred seeds left.
In order to promote the economic development of sericulture production areas and increase farmers’ income, Tongliang District has vigorously reformed the traditional sericulture industry in Damiao Town in recent years, striving to find a new path beyond the traditional mulberry planting and sericulture model.
In 2015, Damiao Town began to introduce professional agricultural companies to build mulberry plantations, promote fruit mulberry planting, and promote the integrated development of agriculture, culture, business, sports, and tourism.
“We can still sell the sangpaoer for money after eating it. We thought the village cadres were joking at first.” Chen Defen, a local silkworm farmer, said with a smile.
However, as the more than 60 varieties of mulberries in the plantation have grown to a certain scale year by year, many tourists from inside and outside the region come to pick them during the mulberry ripening season every year. In particular, Damiao Town has promoted the integrated development of agriculture, culture, sports, business and tourism through the “One Town, One Theme” rural festival, allowing tourists to pick mulberries, purchase sericulture products, watch sericulture cultural exhibitions, etc., and experience the visual and taste feast of sericulture culture.
During the period when mulberries are in abundance, it is not only hard to find a seat in the surrounding farmhouses, but even the town’s steamed buns have become a “hot commodity.” “There are many tourists here, and our community mainly sells mulberry steamed buns, which are well received by tourists,” said Liu Fei, secretary of the party branch of Damiao Wenxing Community.
The villagers’ doubts were gradually dispelled. They fully supported mulberry planting in terms of land transfer and other aspects, and they also received benefits in terms of tourist reception and base work.
Waste mulberry branches give birth to “wealth mushrooms”
After all, the mulberry picking period is too short. How to dig out more value from mulberry trees? At the Party and Mass Service Center of Sanpin Village, the School of Resources and Environment of Southwest University and the village jointly established a Moriella R&D center.
“Usually we only see mulberry leaves used to raise silkworms. In fact, mulberry branches are very good edible fungus culture materials.” Liao Xingyu, a doctor from the School of Resources and Environment of Southwest University, said that the pruned mulberry branches are processed through a series of processes. Through greenhouse cultivation, edible fungi such as fungus and shiitake mushrooms can be grown. Shiitake mushrooms cultivated from mulberry branches not only have high yields and excellent quality, but the fungus residue can also be used as fertilizer.
After pruning the mulberry branches and cultivating them in a greenhouse through a series of technological processes, edible fungi such as fungus and shiitake mushrooms can be cultivated. Now, 17 varieties of edible and medicinal fungi from whole mulberry branches have been successfully developed here. The mulberry branch production line built with one million yuan of funds to link poverty alleviation and rural revitalization will also be put into operation in May, with an annual output of more than 200,000 bags. After the whole mulberry branch edible (medicinal) fungus recycling demonstration base project is completed and reaches production, 375 tons of discarded mulberry branches will be recovered annually, the annual income of the mass mulberry orchard will increase by 300 yuan/acre, and the annual output value of the enterprise’s mushroom sticks will exceed 3 million yuan.
How can ordinary people in the village benefit from it? Through the active “bridging” efforts of town and village cadres, the strains from the laboratory have entered the homes of villagers. Using corn cobs available in every household as culture material, the laboratory provided free strains, and experts guided villagers to grow mushrooms at home.
Villager Peng Xiqun is the first batch of villagers to “eat crabs”. “I used to burn the corn sticks after removing the kernels, but now I know that they are still of such great use.” Peng Xiqun said that mushrooms can grow for several times, and the used corn sticks can continue to be used as fertilizer. Under the guidance of science and technology workers, she cleaned out several rooms to grow mushrooms. If she couldn’t eat enough at home, she could sell them in the vegetable market.
“Eat up a mulberry tree and squeeze it clean”
The development of mulberry trees is not over. Derivative products such as dried mulberries, mulberry wine, and mulberry vinegar can be normalized this year to become Damiao Town’s specialty agricultural and cultural tourism products.
“This year we introduced Chongqing Jinchen Agricultural Technology Co., Ltd. to purchase mulberries from the whole town and develop mulberry wine, dried fruits, mulberry juice, mulberry noodles and other products.” Wu Yuhao, head of Damiao Town Industrial Cultivation Center According to reports, the production line will be officially put into production in mid-May this year, and the products will be sold simultaneously through physical stores and e-commerce.
In the silk quilt processing workshop of Sanpin Village, the fully handmade silk quilts have been in short supply since they were put on sale in autumn and winter last year.
�Silk costs 300 yuan per pound, and a four-pound quilt costs more than 1,400 yuan. Hou Youjin said that the processing factory has been in business for more than 20 years, and customers who come to customize silk quilts are from Beijing, Yunnan, Guangdong, Hunan and other parts of the country.
The high-quality silkworm cocoons used to make silk quilts are purchased from surrounding silkworm farmers. According to Li Jinyang, director of Damiao Town Agricultural Service Center, the first season of silkworm seeds this year will be sent to more than 200 retail and large households raising silkworms in the town.
A special room for factory-based sericulture in Shuangma Village and a 300-acre protein mulberry harvesting garden in Sijiaba have also been built and put into use. Mulberry leaves are directly powdered into feed for sericulture, completely changing the past problems of dispersed and sporadic sericulture, which consumes a lot of manpower, has low efficiency, and has low utilization rate of mulberry leaves.
With the extension and deepening of the sericulture industry chain, Damiao Town’s annual income from sericulture and by-products has reached more than 12 million yuan, and the annual output value of silkworm cocoon acquisition and processing has reached more than 58 million yuan. The annual income of sericulture agricultural tourism reaches more than 5.1 million yuan, achieving an annual increase of more than 10% in the disposable income of rural residents. In 2022, Damiao Town was rated as a municipal-level agricultural industry town, and Damiao mulberry was successfully registered as a national geographical indication certification trademark.
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