Entrepreneur returns to hometown in Hubei province from Canada to achieve his farm dream

After years in Canada, nobody expected businessman Huang Yuanchao to return to Tianmen in central China's Hubei province to start a raspberry empire.

Born into a rural family in Tianmen, Huang started work in 1986, after graduation, as an automation engineer at a Beijing research institute. Bored with the routine of the job, he started his own trading company in 1993 selling merchandise, including imported cars, and made a fortune in the course of a decade.

Huang moved to Toronto in 2002 to enjoy an easier pace of life and support his wife's career as an acupuncture therapist. He grew raspberry plants for fun in the backyard of their house, along with blueberries and other plants. He never imagined he would become a raspberry farm owner in China.

As the years passed, thoughts of his hometown became more frequent and stronger. The millionaire businessman wanted to be closer to his aging parents and also contribute to the development of his hometown. Inspired by a friend who owns a raspberry farm in Beijing's suburbs, Huang set up Hubei Gold Berry S&T Development and started his raspberry farm in 2007.

Unlike his friend, who exports raspberries to Spain, South Korea and other countries, Huang has taken advantage of the growing appetite for the fruit displayed by China's middle class.

"Raspberries are good for one's health," said the 49-year-old entrepreneur. "It was in Toronto that I first tasted raspberries and thought other Chinese would love them, too. I moved my backyard raspberry garden in Toronto to China and expanded it into a 2,000 mu (130 hectares) farm. Starting an undertaking is not easy, but I find myself doing something useful for the community."

As people have become more health conscious in China, their enthusiasm for organic vegetables and fruits has grown. Organic raspberries from Huang's farm have found their way into three upscale supermarkets in Wuhan, capital city of Hubei, where they sell for about 350 yuan ($57) per pound. Huang intends to sell them across China, with branches of his company already set up in major cities, including Beijing and Shanghai.

Investment in agriculture requires patience, and it took about two years for Huang's team to select seven varieties of raspberry from the United States and Europe suitable for growing in Tianmen from a list of 50 potential candidates.

Like any farmer, he has experienced the ups and downs of a farmer's life. In 2009, flooding hit 13 hectares of his raspberry production, costing him millions of yuan. To realize the goal of running China's largest raspberry farm and processing plant, Huang has plowed all his cash into the project and borrowed tens of millions of yuan from friends and banks, using his apartments in China as collateral. Like many startups in China, financing has been the largest bottleneck.

Huang's wife thought the stakes of the investment were too high, but Huang is upbeat about the market potential and aims to expand his raspberry farm to 1,300 hectares in coming years.

Gold Berry pays villagers about 850 yuan per hectare for use of their land in five nearby villages, and it employs hundreds of farmers as temporary workers with a daily wage of 50 yuan.

Many Chinese villages have adopted agricultural reform that allows families to transfer part of their farmland to companies in return for a fee, which has reinvigorated farmers' livelihoods. But it is difficult for investors like Huang to use the transferred land as collateral for loans, thus hindering large-scale and professional farming.

"If I can increase my raspberry farm tenfold, I can create a 'raspberry village' and become its head. I know what life was for an individual farmer from my childhood," he said. "China has to embark on large-scale farming to increase productivity. I can help thousands of farmers become professional workers at farms near their homes. They don't need to be like me and work hard far from home to gain financial independence."

(China Daily 02/27/2015 page7)