How did black wood ear mushrooms come to sell for 300 yuan per jin?

Pesticide residue testing follows the strictest standards, quality and safety achieve traceability management

How are black wood ear mushrooms worth 300 yuan per jin made?

By the end of 2014, China had established 188 national-level export demonstration zones for edible agricultural products. Wangqing County in Jilin Province is one of them. From August 11 to 14, a Legal Daily reporter accompanied the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine to the county for an interview.

About 84 km northeast of Yanji City lies the border town of Wangqing. The county name comes from the Jurchen language, originally pronounced “Wangqin”, meaning “fortress”. It is 40 km from the Russian border and only 18 km from the North Korean border.

Although called a “small town”, Wangqing is actually not small, with a total area of 9,016 sq km, larger than half of Beijing. Enviably, the county's forest coverage rate is as high as 91.7%, yet its population is only 260,000. However, Wangqing's biggest calling card is this: a major wood ear mushroom county.

Relying on its uniquely favorable natural advantages, in 2013 Wangqing County was rated as a “National-Level Export Edible Fungi Quality and Safety Demonstration Zone”.

Government subsidies create demonstration bases

In Dongning, Heilongjiang, the largest wood ear mushroom wholesale market in the country, the market price of wood ear mushrooms ranges from 10 yuan all the way up to 300 yuan depending on quality. Luo Hongfeng, deputy county head of Wangqing County, said that the selenium-enriched wood ear mushrooms that sell for 300 yuan come from Wangqing.

What creates the outstanding quality of Wangqing County's wood ear mushrooms? To find the answer, on August 11 the reporter's group set out from Yanji City and, after about a two-hour drive, arrived at a field covering about 60 hectares - densely packed with more than 6 million fungus bags arranged in crisscrossing rows. This is the black wood ear mushroom demonstration base in Koushan Village, Tianqiaoling Town, Wangqing County. They belong to 96 farming households in Koushan Village, Tianqiaoling Village and Luquanzi Village.

Wei Hongquan, a technician at the Tianqiaoling Town specialty products station, told the Legal Daily reporter that the main reason the wood ear mushrooms produced here are of good quality and fetch a high price is that chemical inputs are very strictly controlled: after the fungus bags are placed in the field, no pesticide of any kind for thickening or darkening is allowed.

He said: “The inspection and quarantine department and Jilin Agricultural University come every year to test and take samples, taking a few jin from each household for laboratory testing. If problems appear, such as pesticide residues or excessive heavy metals, they will definitely be reported back. But in recent years, this situation has never occurred.”

Another quality guarantee of the demonstration base is that the water used for irrigation is clean enough. Wei Hongquan said the government issued a special policy to encourage the renovation of wells in the demonstration zone, in order to reduce the chance of contamination by miscellaneous bacteria from open-air simple well-water irrigation.

“The subsidy for each well even reaches three-quarters of the renovation cost, and farmers are becoming more and more motivated. Today, this well water is even drinkable for people. When it is used to irrigate the fungus bags, the quality of the wood ear mushrooms that grow is naturally even better guaranteed.”

Every bag of wood ear mushrooms has an “ID card”

What kind of wood ear mushrooms can sell for 300 yuan per jin? With this question, the interview group went to the only selenium-enriched wood ear mushroom production base in Jilin Province.

Inside the greenhouse of the production base of Yanbian Tianfa Biological Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Tianfa Company) at the foot of Xishan in Tianqiaoling, a new batch of selenium-enriched autumn wood ear fungus bags had just been hung up. Unlike traditional ground-cultivated wood ear mushrooms, here the fungus bags are strung seven to a row and suspended on high racks inside the greenhouse.

Zhai Zhenzhong, general manager of Tianfa Company, said that as the only standardized company in Jilin Province currently producing organic selenium-enriched black wood ear mushrooms, they rely on technical support from the Suzhou College of the University of Science and Technology of China, with liquid spawn technology as the core, and have assembled a liquid spawn edible fungus bag production line. The entire production process stays away from pesticides, toxic gases, hormones and other harmful substances, strictly implements the organic edible fungus cultivation standard system, and addresses the current situation of chaotic edible fungus strains and varieties and serious toxic sterilization gas pollution during cultivation.

This unique greenhouse hanging model, on the one hand, can save land and change the “relying on the weather to make a living” production method; on the other hand, the fungus bags do not touch the soil, which also ensures that the black wood ear mushrooms grow in an organic environment.

It is worth noting that, to ensure quality, the black wood ear mushrooms produced in the greenhouses each have their own “ID card” number. Through traceability management, the specific production greenhouse and farming household can ultimately be identified. “Even when these products are placed on consumers' dining tables, it is still possible to know who produced them, which effectively guarantees product safety.”

From 2013 to now, the original more than 20 greenhouses have grown to more than 60. Farmers here can make a profit of more than one yuan per bag, and one greenhouse can earn more than 20,000 yuan in a single spring. “In the future we will continue to expand, and are currently preparing to build a second base,” Zhai Zhenzhong said.

Quality and safety achieve traceability at every stage

The Koushan Village demonstration base and the Tianfa Company production base are only two of the demonstration zone's 11 standardized demonstration bases of more than 5 million bags each. Today, the demonstration zone alone has 14,000 employees, while the entire Wangqing County has a population of only 260,000. Clearly, black wood ear mushrooms have become the pillar industry of the local rural economy.

Luo Hongfeng said that with strong support from the inspection and quarantine department, the cultivation volume of black wood ear mushrooms in the demonstration zone has reached 300 million bags, accounting for about 60% of Wangqing County's total cultivation. Products are sold to international markets such as South Korea, Japan, the United States and Italy. This year's output is expected to reach 13,500 tonnes, with an output value of 1.03 billion yuan, and export earnings are expected to reach 37.32 million USD.

What makes international markets increasingly recognize Wangqing wood ear mushrooms? Li Shengri, deputy director of the Yanbian Entry-Exit Inspection and Quarantine Bureau, said that for the demonstration zone construction, a work leadership group was established with the main heads of multiple departments as members, adhering to the idea of “one standard, two markets”, and monitoring and supervising factors such as fungus strains, cultivation media, water sources and environment permitted by the state according to importing-country standards. In the production process, according to Japanese indicators, which have the strictest requirements for pesticide and veterinary drug residue limits, regular or irregular spot checks and full-item inspections are carried out on raw materials, auxiliary materials, semi-finished products and finished products, achieving traceability management.

It is precisely under the guidance of the “one standard, two markets” idea that Wangqing County, as a “National-Level Export Edible Fungi Quality and Safety Demonstration Zone”, has achieved a seamless link across the entire industry chain and traceable quality and safety management, from strain research and development, breeding, edible fungus cultivation, product processing and deep processing, warehousing, trade and logistics, all the way to domestic and foreign sales.

Luo Hongfeng said: “At present, the working idea of ‘one standard, two markets’ is being promoted and applied throughout the county's administrative area, and product quality has been further improved. In the future, we will do a good job in the overall plan for the green, ecological, environmentally friendly and healthy development of Wangqing County, and use 3 to 5 years to extend the experience and practices of the national-level edible fungus quality and safety demonstration zone to all agricultural products throughout the county.”