What three conditions must be met to make specialty agriculture big?
Any commercial activity is constrained by resources and time, and is required to achieve its goals within a certain period of time and under limited resource conditions.
For the industrial operation of specialty agricultural products, no matter what kind of entity is the leader, the industrial development of one or several categories of specialty agricultural products requires certain results within a few years. These results are for agriculture, rural areas and farmers or the regional economy; first are economic results, then cultural and social results, and ideally ecological results as well.
1. Possessing the basic conditions for forming a specialty industry
For a specialty agricultural product to undergo industrial development and operation, what is first needed is that this category or variety has the basic conditions for forming an industry in this region.
For specialty agricultural products, there are mainly two such basic conditions: one is culture, and the other is resources. Simply put, it means “having a soul and having roots.”
A specialty agricultural product without cultural accumulation is not suitable for industrial operation. Many specialty vegetables and fruits grown in today's protected agriculture, although distinctive in quality, are not suitable for industrial operation.
Why?
Because these specialty agricultural products based on special varieties and cultivation techniques can be grown everywhere in the world. Perhaps at first few people grow them and the price can be high, but when more people grow them, supply exceeds demand. Such specialty agricultural products obviously lack sustainability and are not suitable for industrial operation.
Another phenomenon is that a specialty agricultural product grown in some regions may be of better quality than that grown in other regions, but the growing time is very short, while the reputation of other regions has long spread. It is also very difficult to pry open the original specialty pattern.
These all belong to the lack of cultural accumulation. Using modern industrialized thinking to carry out the industrial operation of specialty agricultural products is obviously unsuitable.
Resources are even more important, because resources are the source of the special characteristics of most specialty agricultural products.
The uniqueness of natural resources creates the special growing environment of specialty agricultural products, which is what gives them special quality. Agricultural products that are not constrained by natural resources and can be produced anywhere are themselves not distinctive enough.
Germplasm resources are the most important prerequisite for the quality characteristics and stability of agricultural products. For example, if branding is to be carried out for beef cattle, then a good beef cattle breed is the prerequisite. Without a pure breed, the quality will be mixed and messy, and it will be impossible to form a beef brand.
⟧ The same is true for other resources. The industrial development of a specialty agricultural product is carried out based on resources. Without unique resources and without advantageous resources, the industrial development of specialty agricultural products is water without a source and a tree without roots.
2. Strong commercialization capability
For a specialty agricultural product, its economic value is the most important measure of whether it can become an industry, that is, whether its commercialization capability is strong.
For a specialty agricultural product in a defined region, its commercialization capability can be measured by three indicators: comprehensive utilization capability, transportation capability, and degree of market recognition.
The comprehensive utilization capability of a specialty agricultural product refers not only to the types and quantities of goods that can be developed from this agricultural product, including primary processing and deep and fine processing, but also to whether the range of applications of this agricultural product is broad.
For the former, for example, pomelo: in addition to being eaten fresh, pomelo peel and pomelo pulp can be used as main raw materials to develop dozens of products such as honey pomelo leisure snacks, honey pomelo tea snacks, honey pomelo pastry filling, honey pomelo beverages, honey pomelo concentrated clear juice, honey pomelo fruit wine, honey pomelo flower tea, and honey pomelo gift boxes. Deep-processed honey pomelo products can develop from the leisure snack type toward functional, health-care, and medicinal types.
For the latter, for example, honey: although its comprehensive utilization capability does not seem very strong, its range of applications is very broad. In addition to being mixed with water in daily life, it is used as a sweetening raw material in bakeries and as a natural seasoning in coffee shops and restaurants, with extremely wide applications.
However, many specialty agricultural products also have weak comprehensive application capability. For example, Chinese bayberry, in addition to being eaten fresh, has only a few utilization pathways such as fermentation for winemaking, and in some places the Chinese bayberry can only be eaten fresh.
The transportation capability of specialty agricultural products refers to fresh specialty agricultural products, their shelf life, and the requirements for conditions during transportation.
For example, the well-known fresh matsutake belongs to specialty agricultural products with weak transportation capability, with a short shelf life and high requirements for conditions during transportation. Likewise, wild live fish products and fresh meat and poultry products are the same.
Some specialty agricultural products, however, have very strong transportation capability. For example, apples can be stored at room temperature for dozens of days, and with a slight improvement in storage conditions, such as in a cool cellar, they can be stored for 6 months.
Of course, today's technology is very advanced and can continuously improve the transportation capability of specialty agricultural products, but in this process of improvement, the rise in cost cannot be too great.
Most types of specialty agricultural products are not like bulk agricultural products, known to everyone and needed by everyone. The market recognition of most types of specialty agricultural products has certain limitations.
Market recognition includes two aspects:
On the one hand, the scope of the market. The special characteristics of specialty agricultural products formed based on the uniqueness of resources destined them to enjoy higher visibility within the region of unique resources, and thus markets around their production areas are more likely to be recognized by consumers.
On the other hand, the food culture of specialty agricultural products determines their most commonly used consumption methods. Consumption methods beyond these require consumer education. For example, the common consumption method for goji berries is to mix them with water or cook them in porridge, so eating fresh goji berries is an unusual consumption method and is difficult to be recognized by consumers in the short term.
Market recognition determines the market size of specialty agricultural products, and thus partly determines their economic value.
3. The main entity carrying out industrial operation has strong organizational capability
For something to be accomplished, the final decisive factor is still people. For the industrial operation of specialty agricultural products, it is whether the main entity operating this industry has strong capability.
The agricultural industry chain is long, and there are many entities participating in it, including farmers, associations, enterprises, government functional departments, circulation brokers, and wholesale markets, among others.
For a specialty agricultural product, if industrialized operation is to be carried out, one or more strong entities must participate. Especially for specialty agricultural products still in the early stage of development, the participation of one or more strong entities is the main factor driving the continuous industrialization of this specialty agricultural product.
For specialty agricultural product industries that have already reached a relatively high degree of industrialization, entities with strong organizational capability can better make the industry bigger and stronger.
A strong entity does not mean monopolizing every aspect of the industrial development of this specialty agricultural product. On the contrary, this entity needs to coordinate the interests of all participants, so that all participants in the specialty agricultural product actively make this industry bigger and stronger.