Photos taken on September 26 show the bustling scene at the construction site of the Day Lily Planting Base in Jingchong Village, Huangcai Town, Ningxiang City, where a dozen of workers are busy working under the scorching sun, and rows of day lily fields come into view.
“Industry is a vital part in rural revitalization, so choosing the right industry is the first step. Since most of the farmland here have been found to contain amounts of heavy metals exceeding the legal limit, so the village can only develop dry crops and other healthy and sustainable industries. After various investigations and several negotiations with the local government, Hunan Zilai Ecological Agriculture Co., Ltd. was successfully introduced to grow day lily.” According to Xie Yao, the first secretary of Jingchong Village, the Day Lily base was introduced this July, started construction in the early August and is to be completed by the end of October.

“The introduction of day lily aims to make best use of idle land or wasteland. Planting day lily, a sciophilous plant, requires less technique and low cost, which can not only help increase incomes for farmers but also is beneficial to the environment, and more importantly serves as an example for farmers to explore under-forest economy and the transformation and upgrading of agriculture.

According to Xie Yao, day lily, also known as nepenthes, is rich in nutrients such as protein, calcium, phosphorus, ferrum, etc, and has high medicinal and nutritional value for stomach, lactogenesis, blood and anti-aging function. Owing to its rich crude fiber, it also serves as a food for the prevention and treatment of intestinal cancer. Meanwhile, day lily, with its ever-green leaves and lovely yellow petals, can be planted in gardens, grassland and flower beds.

The 164.74-acre planting base has an investment of 5 million yuan with water-fertilizer technology, which will be implemented in two phases. The first phase is from July 2021 to June 2022, with a planting area of 32.95 acres. The second phase is from June 2022 to July 2026, adopting the “company + base + farmer” mode, which means that the company offers farmers seedlings and planting technology for free and purchase their harvested day lilies at a certain price. After operation, the project will attract more than 300 farmers every month with a total income of 240,000 yuan.  

In the next stage, Jingchong Village will render stronger support to the day lily industry, striving to build the first standardized planting base of day lily in the western Ningxiang. Under the guidance of the Management Committee of Weishan Scenic Area, it will also take advantage of beautiful day lily flowers to vigorously develop the local tourism by designing an attractive tourist route.

Therefore, the day lily industry will not only boost the village’s economy but also drives the development of other industries, thus injecting new vitality to rural revitalization.