Potatoes Are Being Drunk, and a New Business Opportunity Is Emerging: The Potato Beverage Market Has Broad Prospects

Shi You from Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, held a potato-tossing contest, but not to sell potatoes. Many people could never guess what his product is. He wants to make potatoes drinkable! Potatoes have been an everyday food for ordinary people for many years. Shi You has made potato equipment, sold potato starch, and also grown potatoes. Having dealt with potatoes his whole life, he never imagined he would drink them. See how Shi You from Inner Mongolia drinks a business opportunity out of potatoes!

What attracted everyone today was not acrobatic-like performances, but these ordinary people performing. And what they were juggling turned out to be potatoes.

Anyone taking part in this potato-tossing activity only needs to toss the potatoes for more than three rotations to win a prize of a thousand yuan or more. Watching others toss them so easily, everyone wanted to give it a try, but tossing them was actually not that simple.

Resident: Like this? Does this count?

At that moment, someone volunteered to increase it to three potatoes and perform against the clock.

Host: Wow, masters are among the people. What Mr. Shi said has really come true. 21 seconds.

Her performance instantly stirred the competitive spirit of the audience, and this lady in blue was not convinced. She insisted on having a contest with the person on stage.

Host: She is getting better and better.

The challenger was defeated. She practically set a new record for this round of competition and won the biggest prize, taking home a first prize of more than a thousand yuan.

His name is Shi You, and he brought these potatoes. He not only plays with potatoes, but also grows them. In his hands, potatoes are treasures that make money. More and more people wanted to play with potatoes, and just then, Shi You told everyone that these boxes were all full of drinkable potatoes. Potatoes can be drunk? This overturned many people's understanding on the spot.

Resident: Drinkable potatoes? I did not know that.

Resident: Potatoes can be drunk? They cannot.

Resident: They cannot be drunk. I do not know how to drink them.

Resident: I have never heard they can be drunk. Drink what? Drink starch?

Resident: For so many years we have only eaten them, never drunk them. I have never tried this thing, so I cannot figure it out.

Some people said potatoes cannot be drunk, while others began guessing how potatoes could be drunk.

Resident: I think they can be juiced?

Resident: Soaked in water and drunk?

Resident: Boil the potato powder into soup and add some starch, making it fairly thick.

We eat potatoes almost every day, so what does drinking potatoes taste like? There was actually someone on site who had just tried it.

Resident: I just drank a bottle, a small bottle.

Reporter: How did it feel?

Resident: It tastes just like potatoes, quite good, quite nice to drink.

This is the drinkable potato juice developed by Shi You. From the same jin of potatoes, making drinkable potato juice can increase the value sevenfold! How did Shi You turn something many people had never thought of into his own business opportunity?

Shi You is from Hohhot, Inner Mongolia. Since he was young, he had been engaged in starch equipment manufacturing, doing it for more than ten years. In 1999, the food industry was developing rapidly, and demand for starch was large. In four years, Shi You built three starch factories each with annual sales of over ten million yuan. Because of his judgment of the market and unique vision, his enterprise quickly rose to become a leading enterprise in Wuchuan County.

Shi You: At that time, starch processed by a model like ours sold very well, because the quality was guaranteed. One ton of starch could earn more than a thousand yuan.

But in 2005, Shi You suddenly wanted to do something that would require investing all his savings, and no one locally dared to do it.

One day in 2005, Shi You went to the starch factory for a routine inspection and found many unwanted potatoes piled nearby. To ensure starch quality, there had normally been cases of throwing away bad potatoes. But Shi You noticed, why were there more bad potatoes than before? Recently, farmers' potato yields had also decreased. Shi You thought the seeds might be the problem.

Shi You: If the seed project is done well, the potatoes farmers grow have good quality and high yield; if the seeds are poor, they degenerate and age year by year, there are more viruses, and the yield is also low.

Almost every household in Wuchuan County grows potatoes, but everyone uses one batch of seeds for many years. They produce and sell their own, do not want to spend more money, and do not believe the yield can really be increased. Shi You felt that with such large demand for seeds, he could not miss this business opportunity.

Reporter: This place is a major potato-growing county, but no one does this?

Shi You: Few do it. Few did it in the past. Only in recent years have more people done it. You cannot make much money, but this project has to be done.

In 2005, Shi You transferred 40,000 mu of land, visited farmers' homes, and began promoting his seed potatoes. He selected several farmers, sold them his seeds at a low price, and guaranteed to buy back potatoes at a price five fen higher no matter whether they were good or bad. By harvest season, more than ten farmers had greatly improved their returns by changing seeds.

Zhao Aisheng, a farmer from Sanshengtai Village, Wuchuan County, Hohhot: For example, one mu of land used to produce 3,000 jin. With his virus-free seed potatoes, it can produce 4,000 to 5,000 jin. It increased, but I do not know how to calculate the ratio.

Reporter: Then how much more money did you make?

Farmer: At market price, more than four or five hundred yuan per mu, five or six hundred.

When other farmers saw that after changing seeds the yield increased and people made more money, they finally changed the habit of not changing seeds for three years and bought seed potatoes from Shi You one after another.

This is Shi You's seed potato warehouse. Its 20,000 sq m can store 30,000 tons of seed potatoes. When they are not sold to farmers, they must be placed in these large warehouses. An automatic temperature control device keeps it at 3 to 5 degrees, so they do not freeze or sprout. And these long lines and needles allow them to breathe fresh air.

Reporter: These are different from the potatoes we saw before? The kind you eat yourself.

Shi You: The ones you eat are liked a bit larger, right? These are seed potatoes. Generally, the ones that are too large are sold as commercial potatoes. The ones that are too small also become processing potatoes.

Reporter: So all of these large ones are seed potatoes.

Shi You: Right. Like this one, generally by whole weight. This kind is on the larger side. This one in your hand is the best. During mechanized operations, the whole potato is planted directly. One counts as one. Like this one, we still have to cut it.

After looking at the seed potatoes, Shi You specially took the reporter to see his seed potato base in Wuchuan County.

Shi You: This is the seed potato base, all of it. Both sides, as far as you can see. This area is about 10,000 mu.

Reporter: 10,000 mu.

Shi You: This is a center-pivot sprinkler, all self-propelled.