In the past, the former prince Tang Qianyan flew into the homes of ordinary people. This phrase can also be used to describe some agricultural products that were originally expensive and rare, but are now very common and very affordable, such as caviar, white fungus, lychee, various spices, etc. There are many reasons behind the ingredients from rare to "everyday", but if you have to sum up the reasons in one sentence, it can only be said that the painstaking efforts of agricultural workers have achieved this grand event.
1 Agricultural science and technology benefit all sentient beings, expensive ingredients fall to the "altar"
Some ingredients, which in the past hundreds of years belonged to a small number of people can only enjoy the rarity, but in recent decades, they have been "reduced" to road goods, and silver fungus is one of the representatives.
White fungus
Cixi had a female official named DeLing, who wrote a book called "My Two Years Around Cixi", which is an important historical material for studying the life of the court of Wanqing. There is a passage in the book that reads:
"Something like a silver ear fungus, its market price is extremely expensive, often a small box of silver ear fungus will cost one or two silver to buy." They are an inferior plant that parasitizes on old pine trees, but it is not easy to find good ones, so the price is expensive for no reason. Moreover, even if ordinary people or officials are willing to spend a lot of money to buy it, it is not easy to get the best; the reason is because the best silver ear fungus has become a kind of patent for filial piety to the empress dowager who are officials in Sichuan Province; they have hired many workers to search for the best silver ear there all year round and use it to the empress dowager. When the silver ear is shipped, it is always dried very dry, and according to their value, it is packed in various brocade boxes; the most exquisite brocade boxes are often worth several pairs of silver. The value of the silver ear fungus in it can be imagined! But although the value is so noble, but its taste, but it does not know where the good is, neither salty, nor sweet, nor fragrant; in short, eating it is equivalent to not eating anything. So it's always cooked together in chicken juice or other fresh soup. ”
Through this passage, it can be known that until the late Qing Dynasty, silver ear fungus was still a particularly rare ingredient, and even Deling, who was born into a family of officials and eunuchs and often went in and out of the inner courtyard of the palace, also felt that this thing was too expensive. But today, white fungus has become a common ingredient on the table of ordinary people, neither expensive nor rare.
The reason why white fungus can become an ordinary consumer product is due to Yao Shuxian, a famous white fungus expert in China.
Yao Shuxian was born into a family of traditional Chinese medicine practitioners in Gutian, Fujian Province, but later devoted herself to agricultural research. He began to study the cultivation of white fungus in 1968, and it took a full decade to finally achieve great success. After the use of the new technology, the yield of white fungus cultivation has increased by more than 20 times, and the production cycle has been shortened by one-third. Previously, China produced 300 tons of white fungus throughout the year, and after Yao Shuxian's technology was promoted, it reached tens of thousands of tons in just a few years. Due to the sharp increase in production and the decline in prices, the treasures that were previously only enjoyed by the officials and nobles became a delicacy on the tables of the common people. Yao Shuxian openly dedicated his technology to society, and there are people all over the country who have made a fortune from his technology.
In that year, Yao Shuxian founded the Gutian County Fungus Factory under the collective ownership of Gutian County in Gutian County, which opened a precedent for large-scale cultivation of Mushrooms in Gutian. Relying on the advantage of first mover, Gutian's related industries have developed rapidly, and white fungus has become a pillar industry for local poverty alleviation, about 70% of the income of Gutian farmers comes from edible mushroom industries such as white fungus, and even has the saying that "a white ear feeds 24 kinds of people", Gutian County has become a well-known edible mushroom capital in the country.
To this day, the popularity of Gutian silver ear fungus is still the highest in the country and the largest industrial scale in the country. It can be said that Yao Shuxian not only made the people of the whole country eat silver ear fungus, but also created an industry and a rich region.
Agricultural products similar to white fungus include mandarin fish. As the so-called "peach blossom flowing water mandarin fish fat", the ancients were very fond of eating mandarin fish, in the Jin Dynasty, mandarin fish meat was called "dragon meat". During the Qing Dynasty, mandarin fish was used as one of the eight tributes of Shaoxing to the emperor. Mandarin fish tastes fragrant and crisp, and the sentence "There are mandarin fish on the table, bear paws can also be given up", which can be described as the taste of mandarin fish. However, although people like to eat mandarin fish, it is unrealistic for the average person to want to eat it regularly, because mandarin fish is truly expensive.
Mandarin fish
The "expensive" of mandarin fish has continued until the beginning of this century, and 20 years ago, mandarin fish was still a precious fish that ordinary people rarely eat. Mandarin fish is expensive because people have not mastered the artificial farming technology of mandarin fish in the past.
Mandarin fish are carnivorous fish, temper is also special, only eat live animals, do not eat things that do not move, of course, do not eat fish feed, so it is difficult to raise. Until 2013, the research team of Liang Xufang of the College of Fisheries of Huazhong Agricultural University overcame the core technical problems of industrial breeding of mandarin fish artificial feed through 24 years of research and exploration, and the "mandarin fish species and feed matching preferential technology system" established by them made artificial breeding of mandarin fish possible.
Therefore, in the following years, mandarin fish production has been greatly improved, once "giant" fish, into "small expensive" fish, the streets and alleys in the north instantly have a lot of "mandarin fish" as the main dish of Huipai restaurants, this former rare fish, finally a little "close to the people" momentum. With the continuous expansion of the mandarin fish farming industry, it is believed that the price of mandarin fish will become cheaper and cheaper in the future.
Mandarin fish and white fungus are historically expensive and now cheap ingredients. There is also an ingredient, which is historically cheap, for a period of time very expensive, and now the price has dropped sharply, it is morel mushrooms.
In the earliest days, Chinese did not eat morels much, and the price of morels at that time was extremely cheap, a few dollars a pound, almost half sold and half sent. But the edible value of morels has been continuously developed, this kind of wild mushrooms that grow in large mountain forests and only grow once a year have begun to "soar in price", from a few dollars to dozens, hundreds, thousands, the most expensive time, 500 grams of top morels can sell for about 2,000 yuan. At this price, ordinary people are basically insulated from it.
morel
Historically, people have tried to cultivate morels artificially, but scientists in many countries have broken sand on this study, so people have come to the conclusion that cultivating morels is an impossible task. In this context, Zhu Douxi, who is currently the director of the Mianyang Edible Mushroom Research Institute, after 27 years of research and thousands of failures, isolated and bred excellent strains of morels through variety breeding and remote hybridization technology, used biotechnology to solve a series of key technologies in terms of physiological variation of morels and mushrooms, and adopted physical stimulation and key technologies such as standing bags, bags, and immersion in water, and broke through the worldwide technical problems of morels artificial cultivation for a long time. Realized a new technology for the commercial cultivation of morels in the field.
Since the artificial cultivation technology, the price of morels began to fall continuously, in recent years, 200 ~ 300 yuan / 500 grams of morels in the market appeared in large numbers, ordinary people can also buy to taste.
In fact, in addition to the several ingredients we mentioned above, there are many kinds of once precious ingredients, the price has fallen to the "altar", ordinary people can enjoy more and more "aristocratic ingredients", and behind this phenomenon, is the result of the search for agricultural science and technology workers.
2 "People-friendly Project" of Anti-Seasonal and Cross-Regional Ingredients
A few decades ago, the so-called "unaffordable" ingredients did not only refer to the taste of mountains and seas, but also included anti-seasonal and cross-regional ingredients. Taking the most common vegetable tomatoes, people in the northern region have little pressure to eat tomatoes in the summer, but in the winter, if you want to eat fresh tomatoes, you need to "luxury". Another example is mango, people in the southern planting areas can naturally eat a lot, but decades ago, residents of non-planting areas may be rare to see, even if they see, the price is often unbearable.
But today, it is not difficult to eat tomatoes in summer, oranges in winter, southerners who want to eat some northern flavors, and northerners who want to eat some southern specialties. Behind the formation of this situation, it is not the credit of a single person, but the collective wisdom and efforts of the government, enterprises and agricultural producers.
Since 1988, the Chinese government has officially launched the Vegetable Basket Project, a construction project for the supply chain of agricultural products that is uniformly deployed by the central government and directly responsible for local mayors. The vegetable basket project has lasted for more than 30 years, and after the government's long-term efforts, the people of the whole country have finally eaten anti-seasonal, cross-regional fresh ingredients, which not only improves the people's living standards, but also greatly improves the "agricultural gold content" and expands the "agricultural value chain".
Under the guidance of the government, countless people have thrown themselves into the construction of the vegetable basket project, the most typical of which is Wang Leyi, a native of Shandong.
Wang Leyi began serving as the secretary of the party branch of Sanyuan Zhu Village in Shouguang City, Shandong Province in 1978. At that time, Sanyuan zhu village was very poor, and the most advanced means of transportation in the village was a dilapidated tricycle. In order to change the poverty situation, Wang Leyi went around learning the technique of growing vegetables in greenhouses, and finally succeeded. On December 24, 1989, the anti-seasonal cucumbers in Sanyuan Zhu Village went on the market and sold for a "sky-high price" of 20 yuan per kilogram. The following year, the villagers deposited 1.28 million yuan by selling vegetables. After his village became rich, Wang Leyi began to teach winter warm greenhouse vegetable technology to farmers everywhere, and since then, for more than 20 years, Wang Leyi has successively gone to 11 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the central government to teach greenhouse vegetable planting technology free of charge, traveling hundreds of thousands of kilometers.
It is precisely because there were thousands of grassroots agricultural workers in China at that time who were willing to specialize, work hard and share like Wang Leyi, so just a few decades after the vegetable basket project was proposed, various out-of-season vegetables began to be listed in large quantities, filling the gap in the market.
The production of out-of-season agricultural products is not enough, but also a strong supply chain system is needed to deliver fresh vegetables to the tables of consumers in various regions in a timely manner, which is also the highlight of the vegetable basket project. From 1988 to 1993, it took 5 years to build 2,080 agricultural and sideline products wholesale markets and 83,000 urban and rural bazaars nationwide, including 8,220 specialized markets for agricultural and sideline products, initially forming a self-sufficient supply system for local agricultural products.
Then, starting in 1995, the government began to build a nationwide large market circulation pattern for agricultural products. In that year, the former Ministry of Agriculture announced the first batch of 23 designated fresh agricultural products center wholesale markets in the country, and implemented the price information networking project of the wholesale market for "vegetable basket" products in large and medium-sized cities. By the end of 1997, the national agricultural and sideline products wholesale market had grown to about 4,000. By the end of 1999, the country had initially formed a stable "vegetable basket" market system with the central wholesale market as the core and connecting production bases and retail markets throughout the country.
Greenhouse vegetables
With this strong and nationwide agricultural product supply system, it not only solves the problem of difficulty in eating vegetables in the north in winter, but also solves the problem of poor circulation of agricultural products in various regions of China, so today we stay in our hometown, we can eat all kinds of characteristic agricultural products from the south and the north of the Tiannanhai, fully benefiting from the great concept and practice of the "vegetable basket project". It is also because of the vegetable basket project that the expensive anti-seasonal ingredients and cross-regional ingredients of the past can now be purchased at very affordable prices. Many young people who have always lived in the city may think: "Isn't the market a place to sell all kinds of vegetables and fruits?" Isn't it right to have everything? ”
It really is not "should be", because if there is no unified deployment of the government and the Ministry of Agriculture, from production to circulation to storage to sales of thousands of agricultural workers, perhaps until now, we still have to rely on potatoes and Chinese cabbage every winter to survive, and we want to eat Sichuan's kiwifruit, Luochuan's apples, Panzhihua's mangoes, Yangcheng Lake's hairy crabs... It's even more fantastical.
Don't think that the above assumptions are alarmist, we can look at South Korea next door, on the per capita income of South Korea is currently much higher than China, but if you talk about "per capita vegetables", the per capita vegetable consumption in South Korea in 2017 is 197 kg, while the average vegetable consumption of Chinese in the same period is 377 kg, and the per capita consumption of Vegetables in China with 1.4 billion people is almost twice that of South Korea! If it weren't for the lack of sufficient vegetable supply and the national agricultural supply system, who would want to leave fresh vegetables and leave pickles as delicacies?
Therefore, "the world's cuisine into my pot" has never been taken for granted, behind this "food boom", is the painstaking efforts and efforts of countless people. You know, China's arable land area accounts for only 7% of the world,but the population is as high as 1.4 billion, accounting for 20% of the global population, in 2019, the average GDP of Chinese reached 10,000 US dollars, roughly ranking 70th in more than 200 countries in the world, but the level of food consumption of Chinese people is very high - per capita consumption of vegetables, fruits and eggs exceeds that of South Korea and Japan.
If there is no comprehensive mobilization of the government, agricultural science and technology workers, producers and other parties, how can there be a good life that should be eaten, drunk and drunk without putting anything in mind?
Author: Ge Xujiao
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