Farmer spends all his savings on ginseng seeds, what grows is unexpected

Mr. Xiao is a farmer in a county in Chengdu. He saw an advertisement saying that growing ginseng could make him rich, so he immediately called the number in the ad and bought ginseng seeds to plant ginseng. But unexpectedly, several months passed, and not only did his dream of getting rich fail to come true, he also lost tens of thousands of yuan.

In January of this year, Mr. Xiao contacted the company in Beijing using the phone number in the advertisement and bought the ginseng seeds advertised. Mr. Xiao said that ginseng seeds, nutrient solution, land, labor and so on added up to an investment of about 30,000 yuan. Although it used up his savings from many years, he was still very excited at the thought of getting rich by growing ginseng in the future.

After buying the ginseng seedlings and nutrient solution, Mr. Xiao planted the entire 400 sq m of land with ginseng. He looked after these ginseng seedlings like treasures, coming every day to pull weeds and check on the growth of the ginseng seedlings. But as he watched the ginseng seedlings grow taller day by day, Mr. Xiao felt something was not quite right. He felt the plants he was growing looked less and less like ginseng, so he pulled up one ginseng seedling to check.

Through observation, Mr. Xiao found that the plants he was growing looked very different from the promotional picture of the ginseng seeds he had bought. Suspicious, he immediately looked up relevant materials and found that the plant he was growing was not ginseng at all, but possibly a plant called whiteflower cleome seed. Mr. Xiao said that whiteflower cleome seed is low in price and no one collects it. If what he planted really was this plant, then the 30,000 yuan he invested might all be impossible to recover.

Afterward, Mr. Xiao showed us the ginseng seeds and nutrient solution he had bought. We saw that this box of ginseng, worth 600 yuan per box, had all kinds of certification information printed on it. But the nutrient solution, worth 160 yuan per bag, was very crude, with no name or description on the packaging at all. In addition, we saw on a product buyback contract that the company would buy back this ginseng at a price of 3,800 yuan per kilogram.

So the reporter contacted the person in charge of the project using the contact information on the contract. The person in charge said that what his company sold was space genetically modified ginseng, so its appearance was somewhat different from ordinary ginseng. He also said that the company would buy back the ginseng at 3,800 yuan per kilogram as stated in the contract.

Although the other party gave an explanation and a promise, Mr. Xiao did not believe it. He said this plant could not possibly be ginseng, and the company's reply was merely perfunctory. We then consulted a lawyer about this matter. The lawyer said, first, Mr. Xiao needs to provide evidence that the plants he grew are indeed different from what was advertised. Second, Mr. Xiao can report this matter to the industry and commerce department, and the relevant department will handle it.

Sichuan Radio and Television News Channel reporters: Guo Tingfeng, Peng Jing