At the Haoyiduo Ranch silage corn procurement site in Xiuwen County, trucks line up over a kilometre long each morning from August 16 to August 31, with the bustle of activity surpassing even the local Spring Festival atmosphere. Yuan Mingyou, a 54-year-old silage corn grower from Hongyan Village, Gubao Town, remarks that the annual procurement event draws more excitement than the village's New Year celebrations. The scene is filled with freshly harvested corn stalks, the roar of engines, and the voices of farmers and procurement officers assessing quality grades.
Yuan Mingyou explains that a single delivery of silage corn from four mu of land brings in over 5,000 yuan, accounting for more than half of his family's annual income. His household cultivates over 20 mu of corn, rotates vegetables on winter fallow fields, and also grows three mu of kiwifruit, earning around 100,000 yuan per year. Before 2009, however, he had to leave home to work as a migrant labourer in distant cities.
The turning point came in 2009 when Haoyiduo founder Zhang Qin made a decision that many peers considered a losing venture: building a self-operated ranch to produce genuine pasteurised fresh milk beneficial to consumer health. The ranch was established in Gubao Town, Xiuwen County, nestled among mountains with a mild climate and just over an hour's drive from Guiyang's urban centre, ideal for rapid fresh milk distribution. The company invested 300 million yuan to level two modern ranches in the mountain valleys and imported 4,000 purebred Holstein cows from New Zealand, marking the largest cattle import in Guizhou's dairy industry history. Yuan Mingyou still recalls the day the cattle trucks arrived, with many locals coming to see the valuable animals worth tens of thousands of yuan each.
Silage corn constitutes half of the dairy cattle's daily feed ration, making its quality crucial for reducing farming costs and maintaining herd health. Haoyiduo imposes stringent standards on silage corn: harvested too early means immaturity, too late means over-maturity, with the golden window being the half-month period around August 15 each year. Procurement strictly follows quality-based pricing with clear grade classifications. Initially, villagers harboured doubts about whether they could meet such demanding standards, but these concerns were quickly dispelled. With support from various levels of government in Xiuwen County, Haoyiduo staff visited households door-to-door to mobilise participation while offering tangible benefits: land transfer payments, free use of land for corn cultivation, and free delivery of over 100,000 tonnes of annually produced cow manure to fields after dry-wet separation. Farmers can even request slurry irrigation through pipelines with a simple phone call. The free fertiliser saves farmers over one million yuan annually in fertiliser expenses. Yuan Mingyou calculates that he saves more than 10,000 yuan in fertiliser costs each year while his soil becomes increasingly fertile.
From an initial few dozen households testing cultivation, participation has grown to over 2,000 households across Gubao Town and surrounding villages. Haoyiduo's ranch now supplies over 70 tonnes of high-quality fresh milk daily, commanding a 90% share of Guizhou's premium fresh milk market. In 2023, the company passed the National Quality Dairy Engineering certification, becoming the first and only dairy enterprise in Guizhou to receive this accreditation, with raw milk key indicators significantly exceeding EU standards. A green circular chain of "grass-cattle-milk-manure-vegetables" continues to operate smoothly across the region's landscape.
Li Hongmei, a veteran employee of Haoyiduo Ranch for 16 years, works alongside her husband who serves as a security guard at the ranch. Together, their combined monthly income exceeds 8,000 yuan plus social insurance benefits. The family sells nearly 20 mu of silage corn annually through contracted orders to the ranch, generating over 60,000 yuan in yearly sales revenue. Li Hongmei beams with satisfaction: "Previously we had to work away from home; now we earn money locally while caring for our elderly and children. Life holds real promise."
At the beginning of this year, Haoyiduo signed planting contracts with over 600 households from Hongyan Village and surrounding areas. Between August 16 and August 31, the company procured approximately 11,000 tonnes of silage corn, paying farmers around 6 million yuan. Sun Sudi, the ranch manager who has worked at Haoyiduo for over a decade, has witnessed the transformation of this land. "When we first encouraged farmers to grow silage, many couldn't believe it would be profitable. We collected loads doorstep by doorstep; now farmers queue up to deliver to the ranch. We consistently purchase over 10,000 tonnes of silage corn annually with guaranteed minimum payments of 5-6 million yuan." Haoyiduo has cumulatively boosted farmer incomes by over 350 million yuan, with benefits flowing through the entire dairy industry chain including feed transport, product distribution, and store sales, while indirectly supporting numerous service and transport jobs in surrounding areas.
Long queues are a daily sight at Haoyiduo's direct-sale store in Qingyun Market, Nanming District, Guiyang, where tourists arrive with luggage to specifically purchase the signature houttuynia (fish mint) yogurt and kiwifruit yogurt. Each carton connects the mountain pastures, field corn, farmer livelihoods, and the city's taste memory. Since that mutual commitment began in 2009, Haoyiduo has been rooted in Xiuwen for 17 full years. Through the leading enterprise's driving force, Xiuwen County has adopted a "company plus farmers" model, guiding households to cultivate silage corn according to local conditions and developing a new model of planting-breeding circular agriculture. To date, over 5,000 households have participated in silage corn cultivation.
Xiong Wenbin, Director of the Xiuwen County Livestock and Poultry Technology Promotion Centre, observes at the procurement site that Haoyiduo has achieved a win-win outcome for enterprises, farmers, and the industry alike. "The leading enterprise connects technology and market access with farmers' land and labour. Farmers no longer need to leave home for stable income, the ranch secures quality feed, and the industry gains a solid foundation. Farmers now have confidence, knowing when to plant, when to harvest, and what prices they can expect."