After leaving home to make a living for five years, Wang Yanqiang, having accumulated his first pot of gold in life, returned to his hometown of Xuecun Town, Liulin, Shanxi, to embark on an entrepreneurial journey. Over the years, he has devoted himself to agriculture and established a professional cooperative integrating the cultivation, processing, and sales of a series of agricultural by-products such as red dates, walnuts, minor grains, and traditional rural pickles. At the same time, he developed healthy multigrain biscuits, leading an increasing number of villagers to prosperity together.

Wang Yanqiang returned to his hometown to start a business and established a company, leading villagers to prosperity through a "company + farmers" model. Photo provided by the interviewee.

It is understood that the cooperative now has 800 mu of green millet planting bases for quinoa, black pearl millet, and foxtail millet. Its "Lüliang Mountain" golden millet has been certified as "green food" by the China Green Food Development Center, and the products are sold throughout the country.

In 2019, based on a collaboration between the cooperative and Shanxi University of Chinese Medicine on "medicine and food homology" functional products, Wang Yanqiang developed his own ideas about developing food in the "medicine and food homology" category.

Through multiple field inspections, Wang Yanqiang learned that formula products made with astragalus, codonopsis, red dates, walnuts, and minor grains have huge market potential. In particular, multigrain biscuits made with five grains, walnuts, astragalus, and codonopsis, as well as rice flour made with millet, quinoa, astragalus, and oats, are healthy foods sought after by the general public.

Therefore, Wang Yanqiang set up a production line for "medicine and food homology astragalus and codonopsis biscuits," becoming the first health-care enterprise in Shanxi Province making medicine-and-food-homology multigrain foods. After the production line was put into operation, the cooperative gave priority to hiring local impoverished households, adding more than 20 jobs and providing employees with free accommodation and three meals a day.

The multigrain biscuits are sucrose-free and low in fat. After being launched on the market, they received unanimous praise from consumers and effectively drove the deep integrated development of local leading agricultural industries such as red dates, walnuts, minor grains, and Chinese medicinal materials. Photo provided by the interviewee.

It is understood that the multigrain biscuits developed by Wang Yanqiang are a new formula product composed of Hengshan Beiqí astragalus, Shangdang codonopsis, and local Liulin walnuts, red dates, millet, and oats, and a national invention patent has been accepted. The multigrain biscuits were launched in 2023, and sales in the second half of the year reached more than 4 million yuan.

Wang Yanqiang introduced that the multigrain biscuits are sucrose-free and low in fat. After being launched on the market, they received unanimous praise from consumers and effectively drove the deep integrated development of local leading agricultural industries such as red dates, walnuts, minor grains, and Chinese medicinal materials, making the leading enterprise's ability to connect base farmers upstream and markets downstream more prominent, generating more considerable added value for agricultural products, and achieving a win-win situation for both the "cooperative" and "farmers."

The reporter learned that the cooperative has signed shareholding dividend agreements with the Xuecun Town government and more than 150 households that have been lifted out of poverty in 10 impoverished villages under its jurisdiction, including Gaohong Village, Xuewangshan Village, Qiandacheng Village, and Xiaocheng Village. It pays dividends to the poverty-alleviated households on time every year, steadily increasing their incomes. At the same time, it enables more than 100 village households to find employment at their doorstep and has driven more than 600 farming households to increase their incomes.

At present, Wang Yanqiang has been awarded the title of "Outstanding Leader Among 100 Agricultural Science and Technology Village Revitalization Pioneers" by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, and the cooperative has also been approved as a "National Demonstration Cooperative of Farmers' Professional Cooperatives" and a "National Demonstration Cooperative for Processing of Farmers' Professional Cooperatives." At the same time, the cooperative has also been rated as one of the "Top Ten Model Demonstration Cooperatives of Rural Economic Organizations in Shanxi Province," among others.