China's Rabbit King
    Even if you've never been to China, you may have heard all sorts of scary stories about how Chinese people will eat almost anything. To some extent, this is true; Chinese people have a great passion for food and food is an essential part of Chinese culture.
Rabbit meat has always been popular in the south western area of China. When I was in Sichuan last year, I was not surprised to find that rabbit meat is still a very popular dish today. And the truth is that rabit tastes very good and is a healthy, low fat source of protein. But I started to feel very guilty when I saw hundreds of cute little live rabbits at Ren Xuping's farm in Dayi County, 50 kilometers away from Chengdu.
    Up to 40% of the farmers in Dayi keep rabbits; even a modest rabbit-farming business can provide a good income compared with an average farm. Many of the farmers attribute their success to Ren Xuping, who is well known as 'China's Rabbit King'. Ren's rabbit company has assets of about 10 million RMB (U$1.2 million), and his training school has trained over 300,000 people from different parts of China, North Korea, Nepal and India over the last two decades. 
     When Ren was 13, his family could not afford to send him to high school and he was not strong enough for the hard work in the rice fields. In 1980, he used his small spending money given to him by his parents to buy two breeding rabbits. The doe was already pregnant. Eight weeks later, the two rabbits became 10. The young Ren sold the eight little bunnies for 3 RMB a pair. With the money he bought more female rabbits and from these small beginings an empire was born. In 1985, Heifer International, an international NGO from United States that has provided livestock and training to poor farmers in 47 countries since 1940s, was looking for skilled rabbit breeders to start their programme in China. Ren already had 200 rabbits at that time, but most of them were not of good quality. Heifer gave Ren 48 Californian and New Zealand breeding rabbits together with support and technical training and by 1986 Ren had a rabbit farm of 1600 cages.
    A key concept of Heifer's programme is that each recipient must pass on to others some of the offspring of the farm animals they receive. Called 'passing on the gift', it is aimed at helping communities become self-sustaining. Ren has repaid his debt many times over, combining philanthropy with business by passing on thousands of free rabbits and giving training to poor local families.
    In 1990, Ren established the Xuping Rabbit Training School, where about 300,000 farmers from across China and worldwide have come to study rabbit husbandry. Most of the trainees have become better off through raising rabbits, some even turning into millionaires. 'To become rich, raise rabbits; ask Xuping to become better off', this saying is popular among all trainees of the Xuping Rabbit Training School. The school also offers free technical training to people from remote areas, laid-off workers and other underprivileged people.
    With the income from training and rabbit farming, Ren now owns a facility for 400 trainees in a building of 1,700 square meters with 6 stores. Summing up his rabbit experience, Ren compiled a book entitled 'One Hundred Questions on Rabbit Raising', which is published nationwide.
     Ren has built up a strong marketing network based on his 300,000 students and a large number of his business partners across China, and even some from foreign countries. He has sold 600,000 high quality breeding rabbits, 100,000 goats and pigeons for meat. He also provided 2,000 breeding rabbits to North Korea and Nepal. In recent years, with wide-spread mad cow disease and foot and mouth disease, people have become more and more concerned about food safety, health, ecology and environmental protection. Ren, as the leading person in China's animal raising field, has established Sichuan Xuping Greenfood Meat Processing Co. Ltd. The planned investment is 28,000,000 RMB (US$3,389,831) in the processing of rabbit, goat and pigeon meat. Every year this project will create a total income of 23,000,000 RMB (US$2,784,504), with a net income and tax of 7,000,000(US 847,458). It will encourage 30,000 farmer families to raise rabbits, goats and pigeons for meat. The goats will consume a large amount of agricultural crop stalks which will help to keep the air clean from reduced stalk burning and prevent soil erosion too.
     Ren is now a very rich man. But if you had a chance to visit his farm and school, you could not fail to be impressed by its frugality, and the great taste of the rabbit meat as well!

2007-06-06