How can the development of potatoes as a staple food be accelerated?
"New potatoes are two yuan per jin." This was the selling price of potatoes at several stalls in a farmers' market on Baosheng Avenue in Yubei District, Chongqing recently. Stall owner Huang said: "Many people like eating potatoes now. Hasn't the state also said it wants to develop potatoes into a staple food? I reckon business will get even better in the future."
Potatoes are Chongqing's third-largest crop and also the staple grain industry with the greatest development potential. The perennial planting area is 5.5 million mu, and both the area and output rank sixth nationwide. In 2015, Chongqing's potato planting area was 5.582 million mu, with a total output of 6.672 million tonnes. Data from the Chongqing Agricultural Commission shows that Chongqing consumes about 170,000 tonnes of potatoes annually. Against the national backdrop of accelerating the shift of potatoes toward staple food use, Chongqing is also working hard to turn potatoes into a meal.
Potatoes are the "half-year grain" of the reservoir region and mountainous areas, and also the pillar of the regional economy
Chongqing has 14 districts and counties where potatoes are the main industry, and half of them are counties in the reservoir region. Locally, potatoes are commonly called "half-year grain." Potatoes are also a pillar industry for ensuring food security and developing the regional economy in impoverished areas such as the Qinba Mountains and Wuling Mountains.
Wushan County is a key county for potato production in Chongqing, with a perennial planting area of about 300,000 mu.
Qin Keshan, a villager from Daya Village, Luoping Township, in the county, told reporters that on this black soil at an altitude of 1,200 meters, the villagers mainly grow a type of potato called "Mida Yangyu." "Our family also planted 2 mu. We eat some ourselves and feed some to the pigs. We pick out the big ones to sell, and can sell them for more than 1,000 yuan a year."
Because potatoes are the county's main crop, the Wushan County government has been committed to raising the economic value of potatoes. Last year, through the efforts of the local government, Daya Village established a professional cooperative, with Wushan County Fuyimei Agricultural Development Co., Ltd. as the lead enterprise for unified purchasing and unified marketing.
"After the cooperative was set up, no matter the size of the potatoes, as long as you want to sell them, they can be loaded onto the truck and taken away. The income from 2 mu of potatoes increased by more than 2,000 yuan compared with before," Qin Keshan said happily.
Lagging deep-processing technologies such as commercialization and staple-food conversion urgently need to be broken through
In Wuxi County, a main potato-producing area, the perennial sown area of potatoes is about 550,000 mu, with output exceeding 600,000 tonnes. The traditional method of using seed potatoes here is to keep part of the potatoes harvested in the previous season, cut off small pieces with buds when sowing, and plant them in the ground. "This kind of seed passed down from one generation to the next degenerates after seven or eight generations," said Wu Shiwan, former secretary of the discipline inspection working committee of the Wuxi County Agricultural Commission. When seed that has degenerated is used for production, the final yield per mu does not exceed 1,000 jin.
To ensure stable potato output in Wuxi, in the 1970s some agricultural science and technology personnel took the initiative to tackle the problem of potato seed degeneration. Through the use of virus-free seed potatoes, yields increased substantially, with the lowest yield per mu at 1 tonne and the highest exceeding 3 tonnes.
In 2008, Wuxi's virus-free potato technology entered the Ministry of Agriculture's virus-free potato improved seed project.
Virus-free technology changed the fate of Wuxi's potatoes, making potatoes the largest-scale, most profitable, and highest-income item for farmers in Wuxi's grain industry. Fan Xingping, a villager from Bajia Village, Jianshan Township, said: "Our family planted 2 mu of virus-free early-maturing potatoes and harvested 4,800 kilograms, of which 4,300 kilograms were sold at 1.5 yuan per kilogram, bringing in 6,450 yuan."
The Wuxi County government established a virus-free seed potato cultivation and production base in Sanbao Village, Wenfeng Township. "At present, the base produces more than 40 million tissue-cultured virus-free potato foundation seeds annually, providing virus-free potato seed for 1 million mu each year for the county as well as Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan and other places," Wu Shiwan told reporters.
Planting healthy seed in the ground is only the first step toward stable potato production. Xiong Shicai, head of the potato planting base of Ruofeng Vegetable Planting Cooperative in Shuijiang Township, Nanchuan District, has been rather busy recently. "I have to go to the field every day to check. There was heavy rain a while ago, and late blight is too serious," Xiong Shicai said. If late blight cannot be effectively prevented, it may cause a 50%-80% reduction in potato yield.
According to a relevant official of the Chongqing Agricultural Commission, in 2015 the area affected by potato late blight was 1.8285 million mu. Therefore, how to effectively prevent and control late blight remains a hurdle on the road to developing potatoes as a staple food.
In addition to late blight, potato production also faces problems such as a single variety, a low rate of technology adoption, and backward storage levels. In addition, a low level of mechanization is also one of the factors affecting potato production in Chongqing. At present, there are only micro-tillers used for plowing and ridge formation, and there are almost no small and medium-sized machines suitable for mountainous areas for sowing, fertilizing, and harvesting.
Potatoes also have "worries" once they have grown up. "At present, Chongqing's potato processing is mainly based on starch and vermicelli, and lacks staple food products suitable for mass consumption in the region. Deep-processing technologies such as commercialization and staple-food conversion lag, and the added value of products is not high," said Huang Zhenlin, head of the Chongqing Comprehensive Experiment Station of the National Potato Industry Technology System. Chongqing's annual potato starch processing capacity is about 65,000 tonnes, with only 2 processing enterprises at the 10,000-tonne level. The processing scale is relatively small, and the driving force of enterprises in promoting industrial development is not strong. Based on the existing processing scale, Chongqing processes about 470,000 tonnes of fresh potatoes annually, accounting for only 7% of output. This is a bottleneck that must be broken through.
Optimize the production layout with processing as the guide, and focus on developing diversified staple food products
About one-third of Chongqing's cultivated land is distributed in mountainous areas above 800 meters in altitude, and potatoes are the ecologically advantageous crop in these areas. Therefore, how to overcome the problems in production and sales and let potatoes "welcome spring" is a question that Chongqing's agricultural departments are working hard to explore.
To accelerate the healthy development of Chongqing's potato industry, the Municipal Agricultural Commission has optimized the potato production layout according to different seasons and uses by taking into comprehensive account the resource endowments, industrial foundations, and locational advantages of each district and county. Main potato-producing counties focus on the starch-processing type while also planting some vegetable-type potatoes. The central and western parts of Chongqing focus on vegetable-type potatoes, rationally using temperature, light, and soil and water resources, promoting various forms of intercropping, relay intercropping, and rotation, expanding the autumn and winter potato planting area, and fully tapping the production potential of potatoes in autumn and winter.
Deep processing of potatoes is basically still blank, with low economic added value and a short industrial chain, which is a problem that must be overcome in developing Chongqing's potato staple food industry. A relevant official of the Chongqing Agricultural Commission pointed out that it is necessary to expand the processing field and develop refined potato starch, granular flour, French fries, potato chips and puffed foods, ready-to-eat potato products, and semi-finished potato products. At the same time, it is also necessary to focus on developing diversified potato staple food products rich in regional characteristics, with different nutritional functions, and suitable for different groups of people, and innovatively develop processed foods such as noodles, potato cakes, and steamed buns made with fresh mashed potato as the main ingredient, striving to achieve a processing rate of more than 20% and realize the conversion of potatoes into a staple food as soon as possible.
"Increasing research on and promotion of applicable technologies is especially important for the development of the potato industry." Huang Zhenlin suggested strengthening monitoring and prevention and control of potato late blight, actively testing and demonstrating no-till and small-scale mechanized planting technologies, and vigorously promoting rice straw mulching and plastic film mulching technologies. "It is also necessary to carry out research on seed potato storage methods and storage technologies, develop small storage facilities (cellars) suitable for seed potatoes and commercial potatoes in Chongqing's mountainous areas, and explore various methods such as rack storage, heap storage, bag storage, box storage, and diffuse-light storage to improve the storage level of fresh potatoes."
Huang Zhenlin also suggested accelerating the certification of pollution-free agricultural products, green food, and organic food for potatoes, and guiding township agricultural technicians, village and community cadres, large growers, and science and technology demonstration households to establish potato professional cooperatives, production-marketing intermediary organizations, and broker teams. Through services such as unified supply of materials, technical guidance, information release, and organization of production and sales, the degree of organization in potato production should be improved, enterprises should be guided to establish benefit-linking mechanisms with associations and potato farmers, and order-based production should be implemented.
The development of potatoes as a staple food is an innovative systematic project involving multiple links such as production, processing, and consumption. The reporter recently attended the "International Potato Seed Forum" held in Zhaotong City, Yunnan, and deeply felt that the development of potatoes as a staple food must consolidate the industrial foundation.
First, it is necessary to build a solid agricultural foundation for standardized and large-scale potato production and achieve increased and stable potato yields.
Some surveys show that the proportion of low- and medium-yield potato fields is large, and the degree of variety scale is very low. Infrastructure is fragile, the ability to withstand natural disasters is poor, and the primitive situation of relying on the weather for a living has still not changed. Therefore, it is necessary to strengthen agricultural infrastructure construction with the transformation of low- and medium-yield fields as the focus.
Second, it is necessary to build a complete potato industry chain.
The significance of the state's implementation of the potato staple food strategy lies in using fresh potatoes as reserve grain after conversion. Fresh potatoes can generally be stored for only 1 year, while processing them into whole flour and raw flour allows storage for more than 10 years, making them more storable than traditional grains such as rice, corn, and wheat, which have a 3-year storage period. Therefore, vigorously advancing equipment-based deep processing is an inevitable choice for the development of the potato industry.
Although Yunnan Province has natural advantages for developing the potato industry, because its secondary industry is underdeveloped, too few enterprises have entered potato processing, marketing, and seed potato production, and the proportions of processing, external sales, and seed potatoes are too low, its natural advantages have not yet been transformed into economic advantages. This is also an important factor constraining the development of potatoes as a staple food in many places. How to encourage processing enterprises to come in is the key to enhancing brand-building capacity and an important link in forming a complete potato industry chain. Through internal development and external connections, Zhaotong City has strengthened full cooperation with scientific research institutions such as the International Potato Center, Yunnan Normal University, and the Yunnan Academy of Agricultural Sciences, and has established a situation of complementary advantages and market-demand-oriented integrated industry-university-research cooperative research and development.
Third, it is necessary to improve farmers' scientific and technological quality.
Potatoes are very sensitive to water and fertilizer, and pests and diseases are also relatively serious. Obtaining high yields requires intensive cultivation and prevention and control of pests and diseases. In Yunnan and other southwestern regions, potatoes are mainly distributed in high-altitude cold mountainous areas, most of which are areas inhabited by ethnic minorities, and it will take time to improve extensive planting models. In particular, as young and strong laborers go out to work, the quality of the workforce engaged in agricultural production needs to be improved even more.
At the Zhaotong International Potato Seed Forum, some experts suggested that colleges and universities should be enlisted to provide growers with professional theoretical help, promote production methods using good seeds and good methods, and let farmers obtain high-quality first-grade seed potatoes as much as possible. In addition, typical examples among planting farmers should be cultivated so that they play a good leading and demonstrative role, and a platform should be built to strengthen communication and exchange among the people. This should be valuable for potato production in the southwestern region and even the whole country.
Making the potato industry bigger and better requires not only correct guidance from local governments with a long-term vision, but also the joint efforts of growers, enterprises, and research institutions. It is necessary to seize the opportunity of developing potatoes as a staple food, give full play to regional advantages, and enable potatoes to truly drive the prosperity of a region's economy.