Why did Taobentao peaches settle in the Southeast Mountain of Yinan?
On the morning of June 19, on the Southeast Mountain near the Andi Reservoir in Yinan County, a special press conference attracted the attention of provincial and municipal media. This was a press conference held specifically for peaches - the "Taobentao" 2016 Fresh Peach Ripening Press Conference.
In 2012, on the Southeast Mountain not far from the Andi Reservoir in Yinan, a young man named Liu Yuanqiang and his friends contracted the barren mountain and began growing peaches. Perhaps at the time they never imagined that today they would be able to grow a Supreme Peach King worth 88 yuan and hold a grand press conference for it. "From 2012 to now, we have waited 5 years, just for today, to hold a press conference specifically for a single peach," said Wang Gaofeng, one of the partners of the peach orchard, at the press conference.
The young people such as Liu Yuanqiang and Wang Gaofeng, founders of the "Taobentao" brand, have since 2002 successively given up urban work and life, returned to their hometown to build their hometown, and become "new farmers."
From city people to genuine farmers today, their dark skin has become the mark of their dream of becoming "new farmers." At the beginning of this year, Liu Yuanqiang, Wang Gaofeng and two other young people born in the 1980s formed Three Cobblers E-Commerce Company, named their peaches "Taobentao," and designed a distinctive "Taobentao" brand image.
At the press conference that day, the dark-skinned Liu Yuanqiang and Wang Gaofeng gave visiting guests a detailed introduction to the story of how they grow peaches, and guests from various places also tasted for the first time this large, uniquely flavored peach called "Taobentao."
The characteristics of Taobentao are relatively unique compared with ordinary peaches. Peaches grown under natural conditions are large, well-shaped, fresh and rosy in color, smooth and delicate in appearance, with a sweet-and-sour taste that is pleasant to the palate. One bite is crisp, fine, and juicy, with a delicate honey-like fragrance, and the flesh is sweet, low in fiber, fine in texture, rich in juice, and high in fructose. Besides being sweet, the peach also has a very wonderful and unique mouthfeel, which is the most distinctive feature of Taobentao. According to the introduction, the substances responsible for the fruity aroma mainly include esters, alcohols, aldehydes, terpenes, and volatile phenolic substances. The molecular density of natural fruit aroma is lower than that of water, so it quickly blends with every taste-sensing cell in the throat and nasal cavity, so Taobentao has a very noticeable natural fruity aroma when it enters the mouth.
Such superb quality has also raised the price of "Taobentao." After exquisite packaging, the price of a single "Taobentao" peach ranges from 17.5 yuan to 88 yuan. With such high pricing, how are these peaches selling? According to Wang Gaofeng, this year's orchard output is about 150,000 jin. Although the peaches have not yet ripened and gone on the market in large quantities, 2,000 orders have already been presold through e-commerce channels, with presale revenue exceeding more than 500,000 yuan.
Why can Liu Yuanqiang's peaches sell for so much? Liu Yuanqiang said it is because he uses "traditional-method cultivation," which simply means absolutely no pesticides or chemical fertilizers. "In the standards for fertilizing, irrigating, grafting, pruning, and fruit retention, we completely adopt traditional-method cultivation," Liu Yuanqiang introduced.
First, they strictly limit spacing and fruit. "An ordinary peach orchard plants at most 200 peach trees per mu, while we average only 31 per mu, ensuring that every peach tree can get sufficient nutrients from the soil," Liu Yuanqiang said.
Second, they strictly control yield. "Every peach tree has a single fruit on a single branch. A 5-year-old nectarine tree can normally bear about 2,800 peaches, but after 5 rounds of manual screening, we ultimately keep only 100, also to ensure that each peach can have sufficient nutrients," Liu Yuanqiang said.
In addition, they do not apply chemical fertilizers. They only apply a postpartum fertilizer once after the peach trees finish fruiting, using naturally fermented soybean meal from their own home. "We also do not use herbicides for weeding. Although the wild grass on the mountain is very lush, we still insist on manual weeding. The cut grass is laid around the roots of the peach trees, which can both provide nutrients to the peach trees and maintain soil moisture and looseness," Liu Yuanqiang introduced.
At present, the Yinan County Government has turned Liu Yuanqiang's plantation into a "Internet + Agriculture" demonstration park under the targeted poverty alleviation model of "government assistance, enterprise-driven, farmers becoming prosperous," further standardizing planting management, promotion, and logistics, making it a benchmark for new farmers, passing on experience to more farmer brothers, and driving farmers out of poverty toward prosperity as well as local agricultural development.