A Research On Xixia County Mushroom Industry

Industrialization of agriculture plays an important role in promoting agricultural modernizationand increasing farmers’ income. The world is in the era of global upheavals; all kinds of economicstructures, economic and trade relations, the way of production and organization are changing rapidly.These changes require every country and every corporation adjust their organization and stakeholders intime, from the way of thinking to the way of decision-making and behavior, to adapt to the new variableenvironment. Under the fierce competition of market background, stagnation and backwardness is hard toavoid being eliminated. The agricultural industrialization is the final direction and the final way out ofChina’s agriculture.This article is intended to analyze the general process of industrial development and the problemsencountered, with Xixia mushroom industry as an example. Xixia County, Henan Province, as a westerncounty of mountains, is rich in forest resources and suitable for mushroom cultivation. The county has beencultivating mushrooms, since1997, as the bags of material mushrooms are introduced.Mushroomcultivation here is growing steadily in scale and become China’s largest mushroom producer after "Southmushrooms northward”. Mushroom industry has played an important role in promoting employment offarmers, increasing farmers’ income. Xixia County is rich in forest resources, cheap raw materials for thedevelopment of mushroom cultivation provided favorable conditions in early days, in the meanwhile, alarge number of rural surplus labor mountainous also ensured the labor input in mushroom cultivationprocess. With the evolution of the process, some advantages of the original resource are no longer exists,and forestry resources cannot meet the needs of expanding the scale. At the same time, ecologicaldeterioration prompted the introduction of a series of government documents on forestry protection. Sincethe implementation of the water diversion project, the county is prohibited felling of trees as raw materialsfor mushroom cultivation; On the other hand, with the rapid development of industry, labor demand isgrowing larger, the wage is also increasing, and the traditional advantages of cheap labor will cease toexist. Development of mushroom industry is seems to face difficulties. However, after more than ten yearsof development, the industrialization of Xixia County mushroom cultivation has gradually formed theprototype: there are considerable scale farmers planting specialization, specialized processing and distribution markets, mushroom cultivation-related professional market has been gradually formed, appearsof mushrooms accessories market, agricultural market reduces the cost of mushroom cultivation anddistribution. On the one hand is the traditional advantages no longer exist, on the other hand is theaccumulation of acquired advantages, these factors interacting will make mushroom industry continue togrow, or die ultimately, which is a question worth exploring. Based on the above problems, this paperanalyzes the development of Xixia County mushroom industry, compared with Qingyuan mushroomindustry development, so as to answer the above questions.There are many researches about agricultural industrialization at home and abroad, but no unifieddefinitions about agricultural industrialization. The main characteristics of the agricultural industrializationis the agricultural marketization, scale, and operating efficiently. Due to the independence, fundamental andcharacteristics of county economy, this paper takes the county as the research scope. In order to describethe state of Xixia county mushroom industry, the article also introduces the natural environment and thehistory of cultivating, the development of planting industry, and the problems of cultivation faced with. Thecore of the article is the comprehensive analysis of Xixia-county’s mushroom industrialization.According to the principle of effectiveness, operability, comparability, and independence, whichwe usually consider in index set, we set marketization index, scale index, and benefits index to evaluateXixia mushroom industry, finding the mushroom cultivation of marginal labor productivity is higher thanlocal wages, which shows the mushroom cultivation efficiency is higher. Meantime, mushroom andaccessories markets, cultivation bases, the cooperatives, related products processing markets, have a certaindegree of development, showing mushroom industrial chain and mushroom industry begin to take shape.To illustrate the degree of Xixia-county’s mushroom industry, we chose Qingyuan Countymaking a comparison and analysis for an example. Because the Qingyuan-county’s mushroom industrystarted earlier, planting technology and the industrial development level is higher. Compared withQingyuan-county’s mushroom industry, Xixia mushroom industry shows the following problems: theproduction cost is increasing day by day, which is difficult for sustainable development;Shorter mushroom industry chain and lower value-added products, makes local farmers andcompanies cannot get the value-added benefits. The development of modern ways of distribution is lagging,which leads high cost in the process of circulation. Cooperatives in mushroom production circulation do not play a proper role, which cannot fully represent the interests of farmers. According to the aboveproblems, the article puts forward specific countermeasures: Strengthening technology upgrading andenhancing the added value of the product, transforming the thought of development and keeping themushroom industry sustainable, strengthening the role of agriculture cooperation organization.In order to promote Xixia-county’s mushroom industry sustainable and healthy, the localgovernment should support the mushroom industry from the following aspects: increasing the financialsupport and strengthening agricultural science and technology innovation, promoting the farmers’professional cooperative organizations such as intermediary organizations actively, adjusting measures tolocal conditions, prominent features and creating local characteristic brand.