The Sanyuan Zhu Village experiment in Shandong: supply-side reform in vegetables

[Lead-in·China Vegetable Network]“Structural reform of the agricultural supply side” has recently become a buzzword, but it seems hard to connect it with a small village that grows cucumbers. Yet when reporters recently came to Sanyuan Zhu Village in Shandong, the birthplace of China's winter-warm vegetable greenhouses, they unexpectedly found that a new experiment in vegetable supply-side reform had quietly been launched here.

“Our village has supplied cucumbers to large chain supermarkets in Beijing for more than ten years without fail. Aren't we the supply side for the capital?” Wang Xuejun, an agricultural technician in Sanyuan Zhu Village, told reporters confidently.

At present, Sanyuan Zhu Village mainly grows cucumbers, along with some bitter melon, with a total planting area of 850 mu. Cucumber output is expected to reach 17 million jin per year.

It turns out that after the term “supply-side structural reform” became popular at the end of last year, Wang Leyi, the village Party secretary of Sanyuan Zhu Village, invited experts and scholars to “translate” these new terms. “Put into practice in our village, this reform means growing safe cucumbers that give people peace of mind when they eat them, and that is exactly what we are doing,” Wang Leyi said.

Since the start of the new cucumber greenhouse growing season this winter, Sanyuan Zhu Village has enforced a one-vote veto system for pesticide residues that fail to meet standards. “Our village uses the green vegetable pesticide residue standards for exports to Japan, and at most only 5% fail each year,” said Wang Baoquan, the village director. This standard is far higher than domestic testing standards. If an unqualified vegetable sample is found, all vegetables grown by that household will be destroyed, and the household will be banned from vegetable production for two years.

Entering the courtyard of the village two committees, Wang Quanzhou, who is in charge of the village's vegetable sales agency, drove an agricultural light truck toward the village committee's rapid vegetable quality testing room. The fresh cucumbers on the truck were about to undergo the first inspection at the point of purchase. “Vegetable buyers from Beijing and Northeast China come directly to the village purchasing point to buy, but the precondition is passing rapid spot-check testing,” Wang Quanzhou said.

Sanyuan Zhu Village's rapid pesticide residue testing equipment was just upgraded this year by the village committee at a cost of 2 million yuan. It mainly monitors organophosphorus and ester pesticide residues. Farmers who have just received pesticide residue tester training from the Weifang Municipal Agriculture Bureau are working here as rapid testers. Since the beginning of winter, the pesticide residue inhibition rate in Sanyuan Zhu Village has remained below the national standard of 50%.

Before cucumbers are purchased, rotational inspections and testing during the production process are an even more local innovation. “Starting in November, when cucumbers begin to set fruit, we take vegetable samples from 10 to 20 households every day for pesticide residue screening tests. In this way, in less than two months we complete production-period testing for all 140 households and 220 greenhouses in the village,” Wang Xuejun introduced.

In the end, cucumbers that pass layer upon layer of testing receive their own QR code production information. This traceability QR code can be found both on the vegetable greenhouses and inside the packaging boxes, and it follows the vegetables into consumers' hands. The improved product traceability system better guarantees vegetable quality and can also let Sanyuan Zhu Village's vegetables sell at a good price.

Behind vegetable safety is a profound organizational change in agricultural production. Here, the village two committees lead the farmers' professional cooperative and, by having groups lead farming households, coordinate the 850 mu of land of 127 farmers, demonstrating the advantages of large-scale production and exploring a tightly knit organizational framework. This reform, drawing on Japanese and South Korean agricultural cooperatives, helps a loose small village become a supply unit with high standards and strict requirements.

“Intensive, specialized and organized agricultural production entities are exactly what supply-side structural reform advocates,” Wang Leyi said.

“From the purchase of improved vegetable seeds, pesticides, chemical fertilizers, farmyard manure and agricultural machinery to pesticide residue testing and vegetable sales, we strictly implement the cooperative's standards.” Wang Yongliang, a large vegetable grower, is a group leader in the cooperative and is fully responsible for the greenhouse quality of the 10 households in his group.

The reason Sanyuan Zhu Village, positioned around safe high-end vegetables, has been able to resolve to sacrifice quantity for quality is the market support of better vegetables fetching better prices. “When farmers here grow vegetables, they don't ask how many jin, only how much money,” Wang Xuejun told reporters. 2,000 jin of cucumbers will not necessarily earn more than 200 jin of cucumbers. “None of us want to ruin the brand of ‘Leyi’ vegetables. This is the guarantee that all of us in the village can make money,” Wang Yongliang said.

Du Zhiyong, associate professor at Qingdao Agricultural University, has long carried out scientific research and technical cooperation with Sanyuan Zhu Village. He analyzed, “The experiment being carried out here sets standards for the entire production process for farmers and draws a bottom line, but this strict high-end supply standardization model is still an isolated case nationwide.”