Gu yuan Sweet Corn

Gu yuan Sweet Corn

　　Hebei’s Gu Yuan County enjoys the reputation of being the “Home of Sweet Corn in Hebei.” In Huanggainao Town, the county has vigorously promoted eco-friendly circular agriculture, using regional sweet corn cultivation as a breakthrough, confined dairy cow farming as the main focus, and edible mushroom base cultivation as the connecting link—forming a circular agricultural development model of “sweet corn planting → dairy cow farming → edible mushroom cultivation → sweet corn rotation,” linking a chain of industries that has created a “golden chain” for increasing farmers’ incomes.

　　　　The town of Huanggainao has 13,000 mu of sweet corn planting area, over 3,000 dairy cows, and two edible mushroom cultivation bases. This year, the town’s leading industry—13,000 mu of water-efficient sweet corn cultivation—not only generated over 10 million yuan from the sale of corn cobs, but also produced more than 2,000 kilograms of corn stalks per mu, solving the fodder problem for the town’s 3,000-plus dairy cows during a severe drought year. The annual net income from milk production alone reached over 5,000 yuan per cow, bringing considerable economic profits to farmers. To make rational use of the large amount of cow manure produced, the town also vigorously developed edible mushroom cultivation and built biogas digesters for residents. The spent mushroom substrate, along with biogas slurry and residue—used as high-efficiency organic fertilizer—can be directly returned to the fields to enrich the soil, laying a solid foundation for subsequent sweet corn planting. The resulting sweet corn cobs, valued for their high nutritional content, are highly sought after by merchants, which has earned Gu Yuan County the title of “Home of Sweet Corn in Hebei.”