Chongqing's green vegetable heads enter the Gansu market, further opening up sales channels

In the depths of winter in the northern land, the cold wind blows hard and the fields stretch vast and empty. At dawn on December 30, 2015, the Zhangye Road vegetable market in Lanzhou, Gansu Province, China was already bustling with voices. A large crowd gathered around a pile of green vegetable heads, competing to bag, weigh and pay for them, while the vendor was busy beyond measure.

The same scene appeared at vegetable sales sites such as the Lanzhou Vanguard supermarket. The day before, the “Chongqing · Fuling Green Vegetable Head Promotion Fair” was held in Lanzhou, China, where more than 30 distributors signed contracts for the purchase and sale of 130,000 tons of green vegetable heads with relevant townships, pickled mustard tuber enterprises and pickled mustard tuber professional cooperatives in Fuling District, marking the official entry of Chongqing green vegetable heads into the Gansu market.

A reporter saw at the Lanzhou Vanguard supermarket that Chongqing green vegetable heads were priced at 11.98 yuan per kg, higher than other vegetable varieties such as tomatoes, green peppers, eggplants and cowpeas.

Green vegetable heads produced in the Fuling, Fengdu, Dianjiang and Zhongxian areas of our city are the main raw material for Fuling pickled mustard tuber, the first of the world's three major pickled vegetables. At present, the planting area in Fuling alone is as high as 720,000 mu, with an annual output of 1.5 million tons, making it the main vegetable variety for local farmers to increase income and become prosperous.

Zhou Binquan, president of the Fuling District Pickled Mustard Tuber Industry Association, revealed that around 2006, some pickled mustard tuber enterprises in our city began to reduce the amount of deep processing and, seizing the market gap caused by the lack of seasonal vegetables in the north in winter, directly shipped green vegetable heads to the northern market, where they were deeply welcomed by northern citizens, selling for as much as 12 yuan per kg, with a profit margin even higher than deep processing.

It is reported that starting in 2008, the Fuling District government began organizing pickled mustard tuber enterprises and green vegetable head producing townships in its jurisdiction to go to northern cities as a group for marketing. Up to now, 8 promotion fairs have been held successively in cities such as Xi'an, Shenyang, Jinan and Tianjin, selling green vegetable heads to more than 50 large and medium-sized cities in the north, and Chongqing has thus become one of China's bases for transporting southern vegetables to the north.

Selling fresh to the northern market has filled the gap left after the slowdown in deep processing of green vegetable heads in our city, and also brought new incremental growth. Huang Hua, deputy head of Fuling District, revealed that at present, the annual sales volume of Fuling green vegetable heads in the northern market has reached 500,000 tons, accounting for one third of Fuling's total output. The nearly doubled green vegetable head planting area in the district is to a large extent due to the development of the northern market.

Cao Yonggang, director of the Fuling District Pickled Mustard Tuber Office, introduced that in recent years, our city has cultivated multiple new varieties of green vegetable heads, improving quality and per-unit yield, while extending the traditional single-season planting to 3 seasons. From mid-December each year to March of the following year, our city can supply green vegetable heads to the northern market.