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At this year's two sessions, some deputies and committee members came to Beijing with non-traditional specialties from their hometowns, including Guizhou Tongren, which became popular with matcha at the beginning of the year. Agricultural products such as matcha and American ginseng are mostly imported in the general mind. But in fact, they have long taken root in China, and both in terms of yield and quality, they are among the best in the world. In the interview, the reporter also found that their largest domestic production areas are all in small places such as counties and districts, which have driven the development of local industries and played an important role in rural revitalization. So how did a small place make a big industry comparable to the international one?
Matcha is a powdered tea that comes from the green tea on the tea tree just like other teas.
Although matcha originated in the Sui and Tang dynasties on the mainland, matcha culture was later developed in Japan. For a long time, there was a saying that "the world's matcha is in Japan".
At the beginning of this year, with the "National Specialty Survey" set off a discussion boom on the Internet, Guizhou matcha unexpectedly came out of the circle, and Tongren even had the title of "World Matcha Super Factory". In the first quarter of the year alone, orders for the plant in Eguchi Prefecture hit a record high.
At present, the production and sales of matcha in Jiangkou County account for a quarter of the country, and the total production and sales volume is the first in the country and the second in the world. Here's how to make matcha a new specialty in China and develop it into a big industry for global sales?
This tea company in Jiangkou County originally specialized in high-quality black and green tea. More than 10 years ago, a customer came to find matcha, which provided a new idea for the company's development. Previously, although Guizhou's tea occupied a certain weight in the market, it did not take the lead in brand building. However, matcha has a large market demand gap, lower cost and wider application scenarios than black tea and green tea, and it is easier to build a brand at home and abroad. However, the company's research found that the production process of matcha is different from that of green tea, and the requirements for the quality of raw materials are also higher. In the early stage of planting, the management and maintenance techniques such as trimming and mulching of the tea garden are required to be more precise. In order to make a good matcha, you must first grow tea leaves that meet the requirements. Due to the lack of experience in planting and management in the early days, the matcha made in the early days of Jiangkou Prefecture was not only small in quantity, but also low in quality.
The use of local high-quality tea resources to develop new characteristic industries is also a work that the local government has been vigorously promoting. Understanding the difficulties of the enterprise, the Jiangkou County Agriculture and Rural Bureau has set up a team of agricultural technical experts to teach technology in the whole chain from seed selection to planting, management and protection to various tea plantation bases.
In order to make the green tea grow of good quality, in the middle of winter of the previous year, the senior agronomist in the county should guide the tea farmers to do a good job in the management and protection of the winter tea fields, hoeing, pruning, and fertilizing...... We must not let up in every link.
After two years of exploration, the local area finally solved the problem of early planting and management of matcha. The high-quality green tea raw materials have provided a good foundation for the development of the matcha industry. But if you want to be competitive in the market, the processing technology of matcha is the key. How to process high-quality matcha? The company's technology in this area is also a shortcoming.
In 2016, local tea companies began to set up a professional R&D team to study abroad, while applying the learned technology, while further R&D breakthroughs were made on this basis, and finally developed a matcha production line with completely independent intellectual property rights.
After years of debugging and research and development, this production line has obtained 13 technical patents, and the milled tea made of green tea is sent to the workshop before it is sent to the workshop, and it must first go through more than 500 automatic and intelligent detection of pesticide residue indicators, and the qualified tea can enter the deep processing line for processing.
Now, in addition to the production of matcha, Tongren City has also begun to explore the construction of a high-quality whole industrial chain of matcha products, with the government building a bridge of cooperation to ensure the output of matcha through leading enterprises + cooperatives + farmers, and radiating and driving the development of 61 tea-related enterprises and 100,000 tea farmers in 22 counties and districts of the province. At present, there are more than 20 products on the market, such as matcha lattes and matcha cookies.
American ginseng, as its name suggests, is native to the West. Did you know that the largest production area of this veritable imported product in mainland China is Wendeng, Shandong, and its annual output is close to its origin in Canada. In 2023, the total production of American ginseng here will reach 2,200 tons, accounting for nearly 60% of the total domestic production. It accounts for 30% of the world's total production.
Speaking of the development of American ginseng in Wendeng, it has a history of more than 40 years.
American ginseng was discovered in the Americas in 1716, and for many years after that, it was monopolized by Europe and the United States as a valuable medicinal material. In the 70s of the 20th century, the mainland decided to introduce seeds.
Because of its location by the sea, the long frost-free period and the large temperature difference between day and night, Wenden is an area suitable for the introduction of American ginseng. In 1981, Wendeng's Kouzi Li Village received 12 American ginseng seeds from the Shandong Provincial Medicinal Materials Company, but before that, the people in the village had only heard the name of American ginseng, but had never seen it, let alone knew how to grow it. The only information I got was that American ginseng had to be planted understory.
Wang Wenshui, Secretary of the Party Branch of Kouzili Village, Wendeng District, Weihai City, Shandong Province: We watched here 24 hours a day, observed and recorded its temperature, sowed 12 seeds on April 20, 1981, and grew 8 seedlings on May 20, 1981. At that time, the price of American ginseng was very expensive, and the dried American ginseng bought from outside was several thousand yuan a kilogram, and we felt that it was a good project to make a fortune.
Although the trial planting was successful, it is obviously not feasible to rely on the limited understory resources to bring the villagers to get rich. In 1983, Wang Jizhen, a veteran party member of Kouzili Village, led Wang Wenshui, a retired soldier, to try to study the cultivation of American ginseng in the fields under the mountain, but such an attempt did not even succeed in the foreign origin of American ginseng.
Wang Wenshui, Secretary of the Party Branch of Kouzili Village, Wendeng District, Weihai City, Shandong: We found the reason in three aspects: the first is the temperature, American ginseng is afraid of light, and needs 30% of the flowers; the second is the medicine, whether the medicine is harmful to the drug; the third is the soil, why can it be planted on the mountain, but not under the mountain.
After six years of repeated exploration and experimentation, in 1989, Wang Wenshui finally mastered the whole set of techniques from breeding to transplantation to pest control. In the 90s of the 20th century, American ginseng began to be cultivated on a large scale in Wendeng. By 2015, it had become the leading industry in Wendeng. In the new era, the mainland has put forward higher quality development requirements for agricultural products. This year, the new edition of the Pharmacopoeia made stricter regulations on the heavy metal indicators of pesticide residues, which made the development of Wendeng's American ginseng industry face new problems.
Gu Zhaojun, Director of Wendeng Provincial Modern Agricultural Industrial Park Development Center, Weihai City, Shandong Province: Because American ginseng is a perennial herbaceous plant, it must be controlled from land cultivation, management and cleaning. Relying solely on government guidance, farmers don't care, because they only care about the output and how much money they can sell in the end.
In order to solve this problem, the Wendeng district government set up a special fund for industrial development in 2016 to guide farmers to standardize planting, and purchase American ginseng that passes the post-harvest test at a subsidized price higher than the market. After several years of guidance, the proportion of American ginseng produced by Wendeng that meets the requirements of the pharmacopoeia has been much higher than before.
Gu Zhaojun, Director of Wendeng Provincial Modern Agricultural Industrial Park Development Center, Weihai City, Shandong Province: Before 2015, 60% of pesticide residues and heavy metals met the standards according to the standards of the 2015 edition of the Pharmacopoeia, and now 99% of them meet the standards of the Pharmacopoeia through the guidance of policy levers.
If the content of pesticide residues and heavy metals determines the basic quality of American ginseng, then the drying technology during processing is the key factor that determines the final quality of American ginseng. And this technology, in Wendeng's years of exploration, has formed its own unique advantages.
In addition, due to its special geographical location, the content of saponins, the active ingredient of American ginseng, is also higher than that of its foreign origin. In 2016, the quality of American ginseng in Wendeng has achieved international leadership. However, at that time, the local practice of only processing the ginseng and pushing it into the market did not make American ginseng famous, nor did it obtain obvious economic benefits. There are still many gaps in the development chain of American ginseng, which is both a card point and an opportunity for the local area. How to make up for the missing and broken links in the American ginseng industry chain?
The American Ginseng Research Institute, jointly initiated by the Shandong Academy of Agricultural Sciences, the Wendeng District Government and the enterprise, is responsible for overcoming the key technical problems that limit the development of the American ginseng industry chain.
In November 2021, the relevant state departments designated Shandong Province as a pilot province for the homology of American ginseng food and medicine, which means that Wendeng can take the lead in developing, producing and selling American ginseng food products. This makes it possible for the development of the whole industry chain of Wendeng American ginseng. During the pilot period, the institute cooperated with enterprises to produce and develop more than 40 products, which were put on the market in advance to test the water, and the results were good.
In November 2023, the country officially included American ginseng in the catalogue of food and drug homology, and during this time, all companies were busy upgrading their products, developing new products, and expanding the industrial chain, hoping to seize the opportunity to usher in new development of enterprises.
Gu Zhaojun, Director of Wendeng Provincial Modern Agricultural Industrial Park Development Center, Weihai City, Shandong: In 2023, we will apply for a national modern agricultural industrial park, and we are ready to use this part of the funds of the national modern agricultural industrial park as a guide to guide more than 30 Western-level participating industrial enterprises in Wendeng to upgrade their files and move from rough processing to fine processing.
To unremittingly do a good job in the "three rural" work and solidly promote the comprehensive revitalization of the countryside, it is necessary to focus on promoting the increase of farmers' income and expanding the rural industry of enriching the people. The development of matcha and American ginseng in the local area also tells us that the development of characteristic industries is not only to find the right way, but also to have the courage to face difficulties and the ability to solve problems. In this way, small places can make big industries, continuously expand the agricultural industry chain, benefit the people, and promote the high-quality development of agriculture.
Editor丨Zhao Yuan, Liu Dong
Camera丨Zhu Banglu
Planning丨Yu Yan Shan Niu Yanmin
Editing丨Zhang Wenqing
Editor in charge: Jia Hongwei