Rice grown in three-dimensional cultivation with fish and ducks yields 90,000 yuan per hectare
During an interview in Jiamusi, Heilongjiang, reporters found that planting methods have shifted from “single cropping” to “three-dimensional cultivation,” sales awareness has shifted from “growing well” to “selling well,” and sales philosophy has shifted from “selling grain” to “selling ecology.” Under government guidance, the use of the internet has fostered a “banding together” mindset among enterprises and established brand awareness.
In midsummer on the Sanjiang Plain of Northeast China, green fields stretch to the horizon. During a recent in-depth visit to Jiamusi, a major agricultural city in Heilongjiang Province, reporters found that the shift in form from “single cropping” to “three-dimensional cultivation,” the shift in awareness from “growing well” to “selling well,” and the shift in philosophy from “selling grain” to “selling ecology” are quietly entering local agricultural production and development, generating new momentum.
A change in planting opens up broad possibilities, turning rice paddies into a “zoo”
Walking into the organic rice paddies of the Wuliang Pure Ecological Agriculture Cooperative in Huachuan County, Jiamusi, is like arriving at a small zoo——frogs sing in the fields, ducklings play in the water, and fish, crabs and mussels are also raised in the water.
According to introduction, this is a three-dimensional cultivation model of “co-cultivating fish, ducks, crabs and rice.” Ducks and fish move about in the fields, eating weeds and pests, which not only promotes rice growth, but their droppings can also serve as fertilizer, thereby producing green, organic, high-end rice grown without chemical fertilizers or pesticides.
“We generally stock 15,000 to 20,000 fish fry per hectare. In the early stage, the fry can remove weeds, and in the later stage, the small fish provide feed for the ducks. By autumn, 1,500-2,000 fish per hectare remain, large carp can grow to half a jin, and ducks can grow to two and a half jin.” said Fu Yanfei, chairman of the cooperative. These ducks and fish are all green food products and can sell for a good price. Compared with single rice cultivation, three-dimensional cultivation requires more investment but also offers a higher rate of return.
Calculating the economics, Fu Yanfei said with a broad smile that although the cost of “three-dimensional rice cultivation” per hectare is 2-3 times that of ordinary rice cultivation, the market price of 1 jin of organic rice is about 18 yuan, so the total income per hectare is 80,000-90,000 yuan. “After deducting production costs, the net profit per hectare can reach 40,000 yuan, twice that of ordinary cultivation, and this does not even include the profits from selling fish, crabs and mussels.”
To reduce pollution, Jiamusi has proposed building a “Hundred-Li Green Ecological Premium Rice Corridor” to reduce the use of chemical agents and build ecological agriculture.
Today, Jiamusi has established 102 high-standard farmland bases, improving cultivation methods and raising cultivation standards. Li Yingwen, deputy director of the Jiamusi Municipal Agriculture Committee, said that deepening the “original-brand” grain sector means increasing the proportion of green, ecological and organic products and increasing the effective supply of high-quality agricultural products and farmers' income.
Consumer experience comes first, and ecology can also be a selling point
From the low-cost, high-yield approach of a few years ago, when rice went into grain depots, to today's high-input, high-output approach, where rice is sold to Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, heads of agricultural cooperatives in some counties and cities of Jiamusi say that selling well online has forced them to grow well. “Moving products online to sell is just one more sales channel; more importantly, it has broadened our thinking on production and marketing.”
At Fengshun Agricultural Development Co., Ltd. in Tongjiang City, Jiamusi, picking up any bag of rice or bucket of soybean oil “walking” along the production line reveals the full industry-chain information of its raw materials from planting to harvest and from production to sale. Sui Shaojun, deputy general manager of the company, said that embedding product information into a platform built by the government pushes production to be “stricter than strict.”
The information platform Sui Shaojun referred to is the “Green Food Quality Safety and Traceability Management Platform” established with funding from the Tongjiang Municipal Agriculture Committee. This platform generates QR codes from the production data of the city's 1.5 million mu national-level green food standardized base and provides them to grain processing enterprises. When consumers buy products and take them home, one scan makes everything clear.
The “experience first” model derived from internet thinking restores the sense of participation and experience of consumers at the sales endpoint. Air, soil, water, temperature and light along the agricultural production chain all become selling points for green and organic agricultural products.
Focusing on the development of precision agriculture, the Heilongjiang Provincial Agriculture Committee issued green and organic food planting standards and production technical regulations, and built the “Provincial Public Service Platform for Agricultural Product Quality and Safety Traceability,” which has already provided traceability services for more than 600 enterprises and cooperatives. More than half of the province's green and organic food enterprises and their products have entered the provincial-level platform or third-party traceability platforms.
The government uses the internet to guide grain to sell well
Located in the vast and fertile hinterland of the Sanjiang Plain, Jiamusi once had as many as 400 rice production enterprises, and sometimes a single enterprise put out several brands. Every household said its own products were good, yet no market scale was formed. With fragmented efforts, good products did not sell at good prices.
Li Yingwen said that in order to broaden sales channels and increase influence, Jiamusi began working in 2014 to build a unified rice brand——“Jiamusi Rice”——integrating resources such as rice planting, purchasing, processing, warehousing and logistics in its subordinate counties, cities and districts, and carrying out centralized online and offline full-channel marketing of “Jiamusi Rice.”
Jiamusi Times Agricultural Development Co., Ltd., responsible for unified promotion and operations, has undertaken the full chain of work including product labeling, packaging, online store opening and offline direct sales. The “Jiamusi Rice” brand established by integrating the resources of more than 50 rice production and processing enterprises has become the flagship brand of its online stores and direct-sales stores, has been recognized as a “geographical indication for agricultural products,” and its products are sold in bulk to Beijing, Liaoning and other places.
“It was the impact of internet thinking that led enterprises to form a ‘banding together’ mindset and establish brand awareness.” said Han Libang, general manager of Jiamusi Times Agricultural Development Co., Ltd. Now the public image of local rice has been established, and the participating rice production enterprises have also tasted the benefits.
At present, the certified area of green and organic food in Heilongjiang Province has reached 73 million mu, accounting for about 1/4 of the national total. Looking out at the vigorously growing rice paddies, Wen Jinggang, chairman of the Xinfeng Agricultural Machinery Modern Cooperative in Huachuan County, Jiamusi, is envisioning a good harvest this year and also looks forward to more professionals who understand both production and marketing joining in to sell products even better.
(Original title: Rice Paddy “Zoo” and Green “Ecological Circle”——Observations on Developing Ecological Agriculture with Internet Thinking in Jiamusi, Heilongjiang)