Green plum tree fruit.
Zhao'an Sihai Food Co., Ltd. produced plum pie moon cake
Sunbathing plums
As early as the mid-1980s, Zhao'an County began to grow plums on a large scale. After decades of development, it has become the main producing area of Ome with the largest planting area, the highest total output, the most perfect processing system, and the largest foreign exchange earner for product exports, and enjoys the reputation of "the hometown of China's plum".
At present, the Qingmei industry in Zhao'an County has formed an industrial cluster with a planting area of 133,000 mu, an average annual output of 105,000 tons, 135 processing enterprises, and an annual output value of more than 6 billion yuan.
The context is long
The history of the Zhao'an people's cultivation of green plums dates back to the Southern Song Dynasty. In the Qing Dynasty", there are records about the characteristics of Zhao'an green plum, the types of plum fruits and the production technology. Since the Ming and Qing dynasties, Zhao'an folk have been passing on the habit of planting plums, making plums, and eating plums. The Zhao'an County Chronicle records that in the 30th year of the Kangxi Dynasty (1691), plums have been listed as one of the main fruits, and have been processed into white plums, wumei, and green plums (honey plums). Over the years, local fruit growers have developed a wealth of experience in cultivation, breeding and processing. At present, the number of farmers growing plums in Zhao'an County has reached 200,000.
The "Compendium of Materia Medica" records the unique health benefits of green plum fruit. With excellent mountain water resources and unique selenium-rich soil empowerment, the green plum produced by Zhao'an, the "hometown of longevity in the world", is favored because it is rich in 18 kinds of amino acids needed by the human body.
Zhao'an also has a traditional plum processing technology. The "Chronicle of Famous Products of Zhangzhou" records: "Plums, salt plums and plums are found in the scriptures, and now they are out of control, and today people only salt pickle, long-dried jars of frost called white plums; pickled with alum cream as dry ume; plums are not yet ripe, remove their acid or soak them with stirring." In 1834, Zhao'an's long-established merchant "Jinjinxing" developed plum products such as mei lingdan and salty golden jujube, and exported them to Southeast Asian countries and regions.
"Using green plums, golden dates, olives as raw materials, and then with more than 20 kinds of traditional Chinese medicines of the same origin, after charcoal frying, turning and drying... The whole process takes 3 years to ferment, salty jujube, mei lingdan has the effect of strengthening the spleen and eliminating food, moisturizing the lungs and dissolving phlegm. Huang Yingqiang, chairman of Zhao'an Sihai Food Co., Ltd. and the fourth-generation inheritor of "Golden Xing", said that during the light years of the Qing Dynasty, his ancestors often traveled between the mainland and the Nanyang Islands due to medical treatment and business, and felt that people suffered from journey hardships and illnesses, seasickness, and repeated trials to make salty golden dates and mei lingdan. After years of marketing, they have become indispensable items for local people and even many Chinese and overseas Chinese families in Southeast Asia, and are well-known at home and abroad.
Get rich "wrench"
Zhang Jinping, 52, who calls himself a "plum idiot", has been rooted in the plum industry for more than 20 years. Initially, he set up a workshop-style processing plant to make semi-finished wet and dry plums and sell them to customers in Japan or Taiwan.
"In 2005, the average profit of 1 kilogram of semi-finished dried and wet plums was less than 5 dimes, and a box of 24 kilograms was sold for 40 yuan to 50 yuan, and the profit margin of each box was less than 10 yuan at most, and the whole pickling process took two months. The low profit of processing makes many enterprises can only lower the purchase price of plums, which limits the production enthusiasm of menons. Zhang Jinping said.
For a long time, Zhao'an's plum industry adopted an extensive traditional production model, which was directly exported after being picked, pickled, and made into semi-finished products, and the internal organization of the industry was not strong, making the purchase pricing of green plum fresh fruit in a passive position for a long time.
Fruit farmers can't make money, and the development of enterprises is limited, how to crack it?
"We improve the entire industrial chain, optimize the industrial layout, so that ome products no longer rely on exports, but the industry falls locally, and the benefits fall locally." Through accurate investment promotion, Zhao'an has 21 ome processing enterprises above designated size, and the annual processing capacity of Yomi in the county reaches 200,000 tons. Xu Zhonglan, director of the Zhao'an County Agriculture and Rural Bureau, said that the local government continues to match, so that menon, plum enterprises and universities or scientific research institutes to form industry-university-research cooperation, and support agricultural technology extension institutions to carry out research on high-quality cultivation technology of plums.
From 2017 to 2020, the Zhao'an County Government issued the "Implementation Opinions on Supporting the Development of the Ome Industry", and arranged 15 million yuan of financial funds each year to support the development of the Ome industry; this year, the central government coordinated the promotion of rural revitalization subsidies of 25 million yuan to support Zhao'an to strengthen the Ome characteristic industries and create projects related to the Ome Modern Agricultural Industrial Park.
"Now exported to Japan are finished seasoned plums, like this a package of 100 grams can sell for 2.4 yuan, a box sells more than 200 yuan, the profit per box is 5 times the original." Zhang Jinping said.
In 2015, Zhang Jinping registered Jingyang Food Co., Ltd., founded its own brand, developed and produced diversified plum products, and opened up sales channels in the domestic market. In 2017, Zhang Jinping and the Institute of Subtropical Agriculture of the Fujian Academy of Agricultural Sciences jointly built a 50-acre green plum demonstration base. Through soil improvement and variety cultivation, the base can increase the production of plums by 10% to 20% per mu of land, and the sales price of plum fresh fruits has increased by an average of 20%.
With the help and guidance of the government, many local plum-making enterprises have established their own network sales channels, forming a clustering effect of e-commerce development. In 2020, the online sales of Zhao'an agricultural special products and processed products in rural areas were 510 million yuan, of which the online sales of ome and its products were the highest, reaching 100 million yuan.
In the past two years, Zhang Jinping has locked in Internet sales channels, and together with his daughter, he has founded young green plum snack brands such as "Eighteen Dian" and "Mei Friends", and used celebrity live broadcasts to divert goods. "The main product master Mei can sell nearly 1,200 boxes a day, and the annual sales reach 5.6 million yuan." Zhang Jinping said that the products under their brand rank second in sales among similar products on the whole network. This year, Jingyang Food Co., Ltd.'s e-commerce sales are expected to exceed 30 million yuan.
Wu Qiongshan, head of Zhao'an Wenhao E-commerce Co., Ltd., said that he originally operated luggage e-commerce in Quanzhou, and found that the market for plum products in his hometown had great potential a few years ago, and resolutely returned to his hometown to start a business.
This year, Wu Qiongshan's e-commerce company operated 10 online stores, single green plum fresh fruit sales of about 5 million yuan, an increase of 60% year-on-year. He introduced: "Plums can have two sales channels in the extended industrial chain, B2B and B2C. On the B2B side, we have worked with local enterprises to jointly develop cider and plum juice beverages, and the finished products processed can be customized for large beverage manufacturers with terminal channel networks, and there can be capacity and formula technology premiums. On the B2C side, you can use e-commerce channels or new retail channels to spread products into consumer groups. ”
In 2019, Taiping Town was awarded the national "one village and one product" demonstration township by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs for its green plum industry; in 2020, "Zhao'an Red Star Qingmei" was certified by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs geographical indication registration; in 2021, "Zhao'an Red Star Qingmei" was selected as the registration and protection project of the agricultural product geographical indication of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs. A series of brand creations have improved the popularity and reputation of Zhao'an Qingmei, and laid a good foundation for the future development of Zhao'an Qingmei industry.
Deep ploughing
In recent years, Zhao'an has accelerated the industrialization of Ome agriculture, focused on building a modern industrial system with the integrated development of Ome planting industry and secondary and tertiary industries, concentrated on building a large-scale planting base, built a modern agricultural industrial park in Ome with high standards, and promoted the construction of a strong county in the Ome industry and the strategy of rural revitalization.
Zimei Mountain Villa is one of the standardized planting demonstration bases of Ome in Zhao'an, which is mainly based on the transformation and upgrading of Ome Orchards on the basis of the original.
"With the addition of ornamental cherry blossoms and yellow-flowered maple suzuki in the demonstration garden, relying on good selenium-rich resources and unique landforms, this project can perfectly integrate plum planting, deep processing and cultural tourism." Shen Qiuxi, general manager of Zimei Mountain Villa, said.
This year, Zimei Mountain Villa Ecological Agriculture Development Co., Ltd. and Fujian Institute of Microbiology are jointly developing a fermented plum wine product, which will fill the gap in the domestic fermented plum wine category.
"Fermentation with fully ripe plums can maximize the release of the nutrients of plums, and the unit price of the product will be more than 20% higher than that of soaked cider on the market." Shen Qiuxi is looking forward to the landing of this project.
In the more than 300 acres of modern orchards invested by Fuyi Food Co., Ltd., the newly laid pipes will automatically spray water and fertilizer on each green plum tree.
"We mainly plant nancame with large pulp varieties, and introduce modern planting technologies such as orchard reclamation, planting, fruit tree shaping, and water and fertilizer integration in Japan, which can radiate and drive more than 10,000 local farmers to improve their planting models in the future." Tian Jianxi, general manager of Fuyi Food Co., Ltd., said that this standardized planting base will continue to support the construction of the Ome Museum and the Ome Production Technology Exhibition Hall this year, and create a demonstration base for the production of plums that integrates agricultural science and technology demonstration, three-dimensional sightseeing and leisure.
It is reported that this year, Zhao'an will comprehensively enhance the industrial base of Ome, plan to invest 11 million yuan to build 11 contiguous area of more than 100 acres of ome standardized planting demonstration base, and support 4,000 acres of ome orchards to promote the use of soil improvement and fruit tree dwarfing pruning technology, improve the investment in planting science and technology.
Zhao'an has relied on the rough processing of ome decades ago to become a raw material supply place, to now has the most perfect ome processing system and the largest ome processing scale, has developed 7 series of more than 300 varieties of ome fine products such as ome preserves, ome salts, ome fruits, ome wine, ome beverages, mixed products, health food and so on. At the same time, the depression effect is becoming more and more prominent, and about 100,000 tons of fresh plum fruits are transported from outside the county to Zhao'an every year.