The city of Zhenjiang has made unremitting efforts to boost innovation and entrepreneurship among the local farmers in a bid to help the farmers get rich.
Liu Shu’an, a farmer in Zhenjiang, has launched a nursery stock cooperative to encourage local farmers to return home for startups rather than working elsewhere to earn a meager income as migrant workers.
85% of the farmers in Liu’s village has joined in his cooperative which is now recording an annual sales of 4 billion yuan through nursery stock transaction.
The per capita income of the farmers in the village has increased from a bit over 3000 yuan to 36000yuan over the past decade. At the same time, the village administration has increased its assets to nearly 100 million yuan.
Over the past years, Zhenjiang has launched a batch of business incubators for farmers by providing free check-in space and organizing retired experts to provide online technical support and disease prevention guidance for farmer-turned entrepreneurs. At the same time, the government has provided entrepreneurial subsidies of various kinds to stimulate the farmers in the business startups.
Up to now, Zhenjiang has launched 12 demonstration carriers at the provincial level and 27 at the city level. The Zhenjiang Entrepreneurial Park, which is launched through the investment of more than 10 million yuan, has settled 190 startup teams and 83 incubators to materialize the incubation of 53 firms that employs nearly 2000 people.
