How can agricultural product quality and safety be implemented? The key lies in the hard work of production and operation entities
"Look, how well these black tomatoes are growing. In previous years they would have been pulled up by now, but with the 'Diffulai' new cell fertilizer, they are still bearing plenty of fruit." At 8 a.m. on June 21, in Xidiaotai Village, Chenguanzun Town, Jinghai District, Tianjin, Zhang Guishuang, quality and safety supervisor of the Chaoqiang Vegetable Planting Professional Cooperative, entered a member's greenhouse to conduct pre-market testing of the tomatoes.
Over the years, the Jinghai District Party Committee and District Government have treated ensuring the public's "safety on the tip of the tongue" as a livelihood project. On the basis of consolidating the achievements of the assured vegetable base and assured broiler chicken project, they aim to gradually transform, within a few years, facility vegetable and fruit production bases of over 100 mu, agricultural parks and large-scale concentrated open-field vegetable production areas, and large-scale livestock, poultry and aquatic product breeding bases into assured agricultural product bases.
All for reducing fertilizer use and increasing yields, quality and safety
Samples were taken from the four corners of the greenhouse. Zhang Guishuang returned to the testing station, sliced the samples, added buffer solution, shook them... After a series of complex operations, a long strip of results was finally printed out. "Hmm, all indicators are up to standard, ready for market." Zhang Guishuang called the member back. Two days earlier, she had just finished the Jinghai District assured vegetable base safety production technical training. "Not only before market, we also conduct a spot check in between. The testing instruments are all provided free of charge by the district."
"Our cooperative base is one of Tianjin's first batch of assured vegetable bases. In order to reduce fertilizer use and increase yields, and ensure quality and safety, we have tried quite a few methods. Take this new fertilizer - it is made of blue-green algae and green algae. Never mind vegetables, even people can drink it." Xu Guowen, Party secretary of Xidiaotai Village and head of the cooperative, actually unscrewed the cap and took a sip. Although he is already 70 years old, he is especially willing to try anything new. Last autumn, he heard about a new type of fertilizer - algal active cell fertilizer. "It was the first time I had ever seen this kind of fertilizer. I wanted to see what was good about it." He selected vegetables, fruit trees and field crops for trials. Take the controlled experiment on tomatoes: on one side were strong seedlings, on the other side weaker seedlings. After one season, the difference was obvious. With the fertilizer, the seedlings grew stronger and stronger, the fruit was larger, the taste was good, and the shelf life was longer; without it, not only were the fruits smaller, the taste was also somewhat worse. Xu Guowen made up his mind: "Both yield and quality have improved, plus it resists pests and diseases and has low cost. From now on, all the land in our village will use this fertilizer."
Standardized production, institutionalized management
Jinghai District's "Taitou watermelon" is a geographical indication agricultural product. Taitou Town has established 5 watermelon planting professional cooperatives, 1 watermelon industry association, and 1 watermelon trading market. When it comes to agricultural product quality and safety, the melon farmers all know: "Keep to the old ways of our forefathers - no chemical fertilizers, no pesticides, no swelling agents, and do not make money against our conscience." In order to ensure that the quality of the watermelon remains strong for a hundred years, the melon farmers have optimized technical models such as seedling raising, grafting, and pest and disease control in practice, and have formulated the unified and standardized "Taitou Watermelon Planting Management Standards." All watermelon growers must participate in training and accept supervision over fertilizer, water and pesticide use.
In order to let consumers eat genuine Taitou watermelons, Taitou Town implemented a "premium watermelon" project. Each ripe watermelon is affixed with a QR code, trademark, and agricultural product geographical indication label. When consumers purchase, they can scan the QR code with a mobile phone to learn the watermelon's place of origin, variety, production standards, grower's name and other information.
"At present, Jinghai has built 22 'assured vegetable bases' with large-scale planting, standardized production, institutionalized management and informatized supervision, covering 5.6 ten thousand mu." said Chen Zeming, head of the vegetable station of the Jinghai District Planting Industry Development Service Center. All 22 assured vegetable bases have implemented pollution-free origin certification. Some bases, through the implementation of Internet of Things management, have basically achieved full-process monitoring from origin to dining table, making every production link open and transparent, further enhancing public credibility in agricultural product quality and safety. At present, fruit and vegetable products from 50 registered brands have implemented direct "farmer-enterprise, farmer-school, farmer-supermarket" sales.
All production and operation entities included in the regulatory directory
The "Shengbao" brand Daqiuzhuang black pig currently sells for 160 yuan per jin on the market, with annual slaughter reaching more than 2000 head, and the product is still in short supply. This stems from their "unique secret" of limited production - using distinctive local breeds for full-process pollution-free standardized breeding and creating a well-known brand through a direct order sales model. This black pig belongs to the North China type local pig, and its breeding history can be traced back three to four hundred years. It is a geographical indication agricultural product of Jinghai District. Entering the beautiful pig houses of Tianjin Shengbao Group surrounded by Chinese scholar trees, plump and strong black pigs are eating alfalfa, while in the exercise yard over there sturdy black pigs are playing and running. Group General Manager Gu Jing introduced: "Our black pigs mainly eat alfalfa, supplemented by concentrated feed, with no additives at all. The black pigs must grow to 14 months and 200 jin before they can be slaughtered, more than half a year longer than the growth period of ordinary pigs. We also insist on combining free-range and pen raising, and are equipped with modern production equipment such as farrowing and nursing beds, water curtain cooling, automatic drinking and feeding, laboratory testing, harmless treatment of manure, informatized management and intelligent monitoring, to ensure the quality and safety of the black pig pork."
"In addition to assured vegetables, we also have assured meat and assured milk. Whether livestock products or aquatic products, from seedling quarantine and feed control to breeding management and technical services, every link has routine inspections and selective spot checks, changing from terminal supervision to whole-process supervision, minimizing risks." introduced Dong Shimin, deputy director of the Jinghai District Animal Husbandry and Aquatic Industry Development Service Center.
"The work on agricultural product quality and safety mainly depends on grasping the entities. Jinghai's 15 leading enterprises, 1800 cooperatives, 191 family farms, 218 agricultural input operators, 22 feed production enterprises and other production and operation entities have all been included in the agricultural product quality and safety regulatory directory, basically covering all large-scale production entities in the district. Their safety production status is an important basis for project approval and policy support, with a 'one-vote veto system' implemented." introduced Liu Yukun, deputy director of the Jinghai District Agriculture Committee.
In order to strengthen agricultural product quality and safety work, Jinghai established an agricultural product quality and safety supervision group headed by the district mayor, involving the Agriculture Committee, Development and Reform Commission, Finance Bureau, Market Supervision Bureau and 18 township governments. It established mechanisms for division of responsibilities, coordinated action, and accountability. Agricultural product quality and safety supervision work was incorporated into the district government's performance evaluation system, with a weight of 5%, and responsibility statements were signed level by level by the district, townships and villages. The "Jinghai District Agricultural Product Quality and Safety Emergency Plan" was also formulated, gradually forming an integrated rapid response system for monitoring, prediction, forecasting and early warning. "Now, the batches and samples of agricultural product spot checks increase year by year, and the number of trained personnel and training sessions increases year by year. A three-level agricultural product monitoring system at the district, township, and planting and breeding production base levels has been established." said Liu Yukun.
Quality and safety are also "produced"
Today, high quality at a high price and safety first have gradually become the concepts upheld by producers and operators of agricultural products. With the in-depth development of the national agricultural product quality and safety county work, such as Jinghai District's "assured vegetable bases," while standardized production, institutionalized management and informatized supervision have become the hardware "standard configuration," the many attempts made for quality and safety, the sets of technical models and unified standards formed in practice, and even pollution-free or higher-level production models, are the core "software" that guarantees "produced" quality and safety.
Production and operation entities have begun to actively seek "produced" safety, and behind this is a transformation in their development thinking. As investment in agriculture continues to increase, the degree of organization of agricultural production continues to rise, and the supply chain of agricultural products shortens; modern agricultural operation entities have enhanced their market position and gained more market opportunities and bargaining space. When operation entities implement brand strategies to seek their own development, they also pay more attention to the safe production of their products.
From another perspective, the reason operation entities have enthusiasm for safe production fundamentally lies in the honest environment created by the government and the market, and is even more inseparable from the regulatory framework, standard system, training services and so on. The standard production base in Huzhu County, Qinghai Province, was able to grow precisely under a series of policy measures such as local government policy support, a strict regulatory network, a three-dimensional traceability system, an agricultural standardization system framework covering production and processing, and technical training. Under the larger environment created by the government, the operation entities' own quality management systems have been increasingly perfected, management levels have continuously improved, production technology and operations have become more standardized, and internal traceability systems have gradually been established... Production and operation entities now have a "small ecosystem" of quality and safety management internally, echoing the "large ecosystem" created externally, forming healthy industrial development.