Zhang Yuhui, the founder of Xingnong Chicken Farm in Guizhou province, transports chicks and eggs on a cableway. [Photo/zgqxn.com]

Zhang Yuhui, a female farmer, set up a farm in Guizhou province in 2009 and has since been donating food to over 2,000 impoverished households.

Costing 450,000 yuan ($654,279), the Xingnong Chicken Farm covers 400,000 square meters and surrounded by unpolluted barren stony mountains in Zhenfeng county, Guizhou province. Zhang Yuhui and her family carried building materials on their backs in the early stages of construction.

With road construction impossible, the only way to the farm is a 600-meter-long cableway to the foot of Laoying mountain.

Xingnong Chicken Farm buys chickens from impoverished farmers, with the chicks provided by the local government, which reduces the financial risks to farmers to a minimum. Farmers can have their chicks grown on the Xingnong farm and share the dividends annually.

About 270,000 chickens were fostered at the farm in 2016, earning 1,281 households 100,000 yuan each in an annual dividend, with a further two years of earning coming from those animals.

“Chen Yuangang’s mother, a villager in Lugong county, Guizhou province, earned a net income of 3,000 yuan in just six months last year by raising 300 chicks,” said Wang Fawei, the head of Lugong county’s poverty alleviation workstation.

Some 10 percent of targeted poverty alleviation families come out of poverty by raising chickens in Lugong county, Wang said.

Zhang Yuhui said: “Only by increasing the scale of Xingnong Chicken Farm can we help more impoverished farmers.” About 80,000 chicks will be distributed to 654 targeted poverty alleviation households in 2017.