How can the Chinese medicinal herb industry achieve healthy development?
This January, the Ministry of Commerce issued the "Notice of Guiding Opinions on Accelerating the Construction of a Modern Logistics System for Chinese Medicinal Herbs." The Notice requires local competent commerce departments to promote the establishment of a modern logistics system for Chinese medicinal herbs, advance the modernization of Chinese medicinal herb circulation, and enhance the quality and safety assurance capacity for Chinese medicinal herbs.
The Notice sets out the overall goal of preliminarily forming by 2020 a modern logistics system for Chinese medicinal herbs that integrates harvesting, origin processing, packaging, warehousing and transportation, and proposes six main tasks: first, building Chinese medicinal herb industrial processing bases; second, standardizing Chinese medicinal herb packaging; third, building a centralized warehousing and distribution network; fourth, promoting the application of modern logistics management and technology; fifth, improving the supporting logistics service functions of specialized Chinese medicinal herb markets; sixth, strengthening and expanding Chinese medicinal herb warehousing and logistics enterprises.
The Chinese Medicinal Herb Warehousing Branch of the China Warehousing Association was formally established in May 2014. As the only industry organization in the Chinese medicinal herb logistics sector, the Branch played an important role in the drafting process of the Ministry of Commerce's "Notice of Guiding Opinions on Promoting the Construction of a Modern Logistics System for Chinese Medicinal Herbs."
On questions such as how to understand the significance of the Notice for the industry and how the industry should act proactively to implement the Notice, our newspaper's reporter interviewed the head of the Chinese Medicinal Herb Warehousing Branch.
Reporter: The Notice is the first issued by the Ministry of Commerce specifically targeting Chinese medicinal herb logistics. Why do government departments attach such importance to the logistics development of an industry?
Head: The issuance of the Notice mainly targets the prominent problems currently existing in Chinese medicinal herb logistics. At present, the overall state of Chinese medicinal herb logistics in our country remains relatively backward: the Chinese medicinal herb industry is small and scattered, with origin processing, packaging and storage basically completed by the vast number of herb farmers and individual merchants themselves; warehouses are mainly private homes; operations are mainly manual; maintenance mainly continues to use sulfur fumigation; the state of Chinese medicinal herb logistics, compared with industrial consumer goods, lags by 20 years, and compared with agricultural products such as fruits and vegetables (000061, stock bar), lags by 10 years.
First, Chinese medicinal herb logistics must begin with primary processing at the place of origin. In this respect, it differs from the circulation processing of industrial consumer goods. The circulation processing of industrial consumer goods is completed inside the warehouse and before dispatch, whereas the origin processing of Chinese medicinal herbs is completed after harvesting and before warehousing. At present, processing is scattered among herb farmers, giving rise to problems such as “sun-drying by the roadside” and sulfur fumigation; it should gradually be organized in a centralized manner by Chinese medicinal herb operating enterprises and logistics enterprises, and origin primary processing bases and warehousing facilities should be built in a coordinated way.
Second, Chinese medicinal herb logistics methods must be suited to the physiological characteristics of Chinese medicinal herbs, and Chinese medicinal herb logistics must have maintenance functions. In this respect, it differs from industrial consumer goods logistics. At present, industrial consumer goods basically no longer need maintenance; it also differs from the preservation technology for fruits and vegetables, which simply need to be placed in cold storage. Chinese medicinal herbs are prone to insects, mold and oil seepage, but there are many varieties and market prices vary greatly, so only rare and precious medicinal herbs are suited to cold storage, while bulk medicinal herbs are generally stored in normal-temperature warehouses or cool warehouses, which gives rise to a maintenance technology issue. Sulfur and aluminum phosphide fumigation should be gradually eliminated, and scientific and environmentally friendly technologies such as controlled-atmosphere maintenance should be applied.
Third, Chinese medicinal herb logistics methods must also be suited to the cultivation and circulation methods of Chinese medicinal herbs and their quality assurance requirements, and Chinese medicinal herb logistics must assume the functions of quality testing, recording and traceability for Chinese medicinal herbs. In this respect, it differs from the logistics of industrial consumer goods and other agricultural products. Because Chinese medicinal herbs are cultivated in a scattered manner by the vast number of herb farmers and operated in a scattered manner by the vast number of individual merchants, there are relatively many transactions in Chinese medicinal herb circulation, involving relatively many enterprises. In order to ensure the quality of Chinese medicinal herbs in circulation, logistics enterprises must assume the functions of testing, recording and traceability for Chinese medicinal herbs, testing and recording not only the appearance of Chinese medicinal herbs (color, odor, mold, insect conditions, etc.) but also their intrinsic quality (moisture, impurities, total ash, ingredient content, pesticide residues, heavy metals, sulfur dioxide residues, etc.), and must use information systems to manage the entire logistics process.