Gejiu Dacaowu

Gejiu Dacaowu

　　Gejiu City has a long history of artificially cultivating the medicinal herb Dacaowu. As early as the mid-1990s, towns such as Laochang and Xicheng conducted successful trials in artificially cultivating the wild medicinal herb Dacaowu, and gradually expanded its cultivation in the southern mountainous areas year by year.

Since 2003, when the municipal Party committee and government included the cultivation of medicinal herbs, mainly Dacaowu, as one of the six key agricultural industries to support and develop, the growth of Dacaowu cultivation has accelerated rapidly. In that year, the city’s Dacaowu planting area reached 2,000 mu, with a total output of 400,000 kg, an average yield of 2,200 yuan per mu, and a total output value of 4.4 million yuan. In the following years, the scale of Dacaowu cultivation continued to expand year by year. By 2008, the city’s Dacaowu planting area had reached 2,950 mu, with an average yield of 363.86 kg per mu. Compared with 2007, the planting area increased by 550 mu, or 22.92%, and the average yield per mu rose by 50.16 kg, or 16%. Based on the 2007 market average price of 17 yuan per kg for Dacaowu, the yield per mu reached 6,185.6 yuan.

In 2009, driven by the high yields of 2008, the planting area of Dacaowu in Gejiu City exceeded 3,000 mu for the first time, reaching 3,100 mu — an increase of 150 mu, or 5.1%, compared to 2,950 mu in 2008. Dacaowu has not only become a locally advantageous medicinal product in Gejiu, but also a major pillar industry of the city’s agriculture.