Yuan'an, Hubei: "Small Mushrooms" Supporting Rural Revitalization and "Getting Rich Umbrella"

Yichang, China News Agency (March 7) (Dong Xiaobin, Wang Dan, Zhu Lijun) "Yuan'an shiitake mushrooms are of excellent quality and delicious taste. You can try them." At home in Hekou Village, Hekou Township, Yuan'an County, Hubei Province, a 60-year-old mushroom farmer named Xiang Xingping held a bag of dried shiitake mushrooms and "brought them" on an online live streaming platform. Over 40 customers placed orders for a two hour live broadcast.
Yuan'an is the "hometown of spring planted mushrooms in China", with an annual planting scale of 65 million bags of mushrooms and an output value of over 1.5 billion yuan. Recently, reporters walked into Yuan'an to visit the "small mushrooms" that have become the "umbrella" for local rural revitalization.
In 1986, Yuan'an County vigorously introduced the cultivation technology of bagged shiitake mushrooms, sparking a wave of development for edible mushrooms. In recent years, the county has arranged special funds to support the edible mushroom industry and made the research and development of mushroom species a leading project in agricultural modernization, developing the drinking, edible, and medicinal value of edible fungi.
In 2014, Xiang Xingping, who had been a mushroom farmer for 30 years, began testing e-commerce sales. As sales grew, he purchased shiitake mushrooms from local mushroom farmers and processed them into 18 individual products, including shiitake umbrellas, shiitake slices, and shiitake legs. In 2022, Xiang Xingping and his daughter Xiang Guirong sold 420000 kilograms of shiitake mushrooms through e-commerce platforms, with sales reaching over 6 million yuan.
Yuan'an shiitake mushrooms have also gone abroad. At Yichang Nature Biotechnology Co., Ltd. located in Maopingchang Town, Yuan'an County, workers are busy on the assembly line of the production workshop. After cleaning, slicing, baking, sterilization, canning and other processes, cans of canned shiitake mushrooms are produced. The company's chairman, Zhou Huaxiong, introduced that it can produce 5000 tons of canned shiitake mushrooms annually, mainly sold to more than 20 countries such as Russia, South Korea, and Pakistan. "The company has received over 10 million tons of intended orders this year, with an estimated sales revenue of up to 30 million US dollars
At present, Yuan'an is developing from a single variety of shiitake mushrooms to rare mushrooms such as morel and mulberry yellow. Nearly 200 acres of rare mushrooms have been planted, and 18 standardized bases have been established. The county currently has 15 edible mushroom enterprises, 84 professional cooperatives, and 20 family farms. There are 8500 households engaged in edible mushroom cultivation, and the average annual income of mushroom farmers is over 8000 yuan.
Tang Ming, Secretary of the Yuan'an County Party Committee, stated that the county will continue to enhance its technological innovation capabilities, adjust the structure of edible mushroom varieties, strengthen the construction of agricultural product brands, and through government guidance and support for leading enterprises to implement technological transformation, focus on extending and strengthening the chain, and promote the high-quality development of the edible mushroom industry.