Today (September 23) is the 5th “Chinese Farmers Harvest Festival”. Now is the season when seasonal fruits are concentrated on the market. What is the difference between this year’s fruit consumption market and previous years? Our reporters traveled across the country.
The country enters the peak season for fruit delivery
On the China Express Big Data Platform of the State Post Bureau, the big screen keeps flashing, showing the delivery status of agricultural special products across the country.
Xu Liangfeng, Deputy Director of the Data Management Department of the Postal Industry Security Center of the State Post Bureau: Since August, the country has entered the peak season for fruit delivery. From the perspective of different regions, the fruit delivery business generally shows a trend of shifting from south to north and east to west, and the fruit delivery business volume in central and western regions such as Xinjiang, Shaanxi, and Yunnan has increased significantly.
The reporter saw that on this fruit express map, different areas are marked with different fruits. The staff said that if there are signs, it means that the volume of express delivery of special fruits in this place has reached 10 million pieces, and it has become a gold medal project of modern agriculture in express delivery services. Many of these projects are located in the central and western regions.
Xu Liangfeng, deputy director of the data management department of the Postal Industry Security Center of the State Post Bureau: For example, in Liangshan Prefecture, Sichuan, the delivery of agricultural special products accounts for more than 60% of the local business volume. Pomegranates like Huili account for more than 80% of the express delivery business in the county. It can be said that the pomegranates in Huili play an important role in the development of the local economy and the increase of farmers’ income. Like Kashgar in Xinjiang, in addition to the traditional cantaloupe and grapes, thanks to the industry’s cold chain technology and the improvement of timeliness, Jiashi’s plums have become a new Internet celebrity fruit.
What you can see is this rapidly expanding fruit map. What you can’t see is the three-level logistics and distribution system in the county and village. Some farmers’ professional cooperatives and family farms have also built cold storage facilities at the place of origin, which keeps the quality of the fruit sustainable. Upgrade, the upward channel is more smooth.
What scientific and technological means are contained in the fruit harvest?
Through the fruit express map, it is not difficult to see that the fruits on the market this year are not only large in quantity, high quality and rich in variety, but also the speed of upward movement has been greatly improved. What are the technological means and digital passwords to achieve all this? Let’s go to the fruit harvesting sites around the world to find out.
Zhao Zhongyuan, a fruit farmer of Qiongzhong green orange in Hainan: I am from Qiongzhong, Hainan, where I planted Qiongzhong green orange, a landmark agricultural product in Hainan. Our orange orchard adopts the traditional planting method passed down by Qiongzhong Green Orange for decades, and then combines it with our modern and digital agriculture to conduct field management for the entire orange orchard.
Like our orange orchard, there are more than 1,000 acres, and they are all mountainous. It turned out that a worker could only work (medicine) ten acres of land a day, and it would take about ten days and a half months to complete this orchard. Now, we have a drone that a worker can do in two days. Using the intelligent management system of drones, we can achieve no dead ends in high mountain fields, full coverage of low-lying fields, and one person in charge of the whole park. I started as a live e-commerce business, and now it has gradually developed into a supply chain that integrates the entire Hainan fruit, and sends it to most parts of the country through the current strong logistics system.
Wang Xiaoqing, head of the carbon-rich vegetable factory in Shuimu Mengdian, Huixian County, Henan Province: Our vegetable factory is located in a power plant. We use the carbon dioxide generated by the power plant to deliver our tomatoes, so that tomatoes not only “eat” light and heat, but also “eat” to the gas fat. The temperature can be increased in winter and the temperature can be cooled in summer, so that the field yield has been extended from the original one and a half month picking period to 12 months, so our yield per mu can exceed the traditional yield of more than 50 mu.
Through the precise calculation of the computer, the light and water required by each of our tomatoes, especially the amount of carbon dioxide required for photosynthesis, can make carbon dioxide a high-quality gas fertilizer. A vegetable factory of 50 acres will have 2.1 million kilograms per year. The output, carbon sequestration capacity and emission reduction can reach 24,000 tons per year.
Chen Fumin, a fruit farmer in Luochuan, Shaanxi Province: Luochuan’s light, altitude, and soil all meet the standards of the world’s apple eugenic area. After modernization, all the facilities for water and fertilizer integration are in place. Therefore, Luochuan apples have such a good taste, with thin skin and juicy, moderate sour and sweet.
Wang Chao, an e-commerce practitioner in Luochuan, Shaanxi: Delicious food is the main thing, and the second is good-looking. These two standards are used as our standards for storage and storage. All apples can do an “X-ray”. An apple can take a picture of 120. Through the 4.0 (smart) sorting line, the color, sugar content and gram weight of each apple, including the moldy heart fruit that cannot be seen by the naked eye, can be sorted out one by one.
The sugar content of each apple is above 13 degrees before being put into the box, and those below 13 degrees are all screened out. We have been doing e-commerce since 2020. In the past two years, the daily shipment volume can reach 6,000 to 7,000 orders. In the whole year, it can basically reach 11,000 tons.
Sugar measurement with digital technology
High-priced grapes become cheap
When it comes to fruit that has recently become popular in the market, the “Sunshine Rose” grape can be regarded as one. Because it mainly relied on imports in the past, its price once reached hundreds of yuan per catty. In recent years, with the promotion of digital planting technology, the planting area of domestic sunshine rose grapes has continued to expand, and the price has dropped to more than ten yuan per pound, and it has become a characteristic industry in some places.
27-year-old Zhao Yao is a native of Binchuan, Yunnan. A few years ago, he graduated with a major in biotechnology and returned to his hometown to become a professional grape sugar tester.
Zhao Yao, a grape sugar tester in Binchuan County, Yunnan Province: It feels a little elastic to the touch, and its sugar content is high. Before the grapes go on the market, we have to measure thousands of grapes a day. The taste of our domestic sunshine rose grapes is actually no worse than that of imported grapes, and the sweetness can reach more than 20.
In the past, the domestic production of Sunshine Rose grapes was relatively small, and the market mainly relied on imports, so prices were once high. Starting from 2019, Yunnan Binchuan has begun to expand the planting scale of Sunshine Rose grapes by taking advantage of its unique geographical advantages. The first problem they have to solve is to control the sweetness.
Zhao Yao, a grape sugar tester in Binchuan County, Yunnan Province: The taste of a grape depends on its sugar content. Higher sugar content usually tastes better. Using visual inspection and tasting the sweetness with your mouth will cause some errors in judgment.
Unlike his parents, Zhao Yao now uses digital sugar measurement technology. Pick the bottom of the bunch of grapes, squeeze out the juice with your hands, and put it into the depression on the top of the hand-held sugar tester. After a few seconds, the sugar tester will display the sugar content of the grapes.
Zhao Yao, a grape sugar tester from Binchuan County, Yunnan Province: Three to five days before it can be sold (sugar test). We sell them in batches, and we sell them in batches if they meet the standard. If they don’t meet the standard, we will raise them for a few days, seven or eight days a week, and their sugar level will rise.
In the first half of this year, the grape planting area in Binchuan County, Yunnan has exceeded 170,000 mu, and the grape sales period has reached more than 100 days. There are nearly 1,000 professional sugar testers like Zhao Yao, and local jobs such as “grape sorting workers” and “grape packing workers” are also provided, with a monthly increase of 6,000 to 8,000 yuan per capita.
Chen Dengfeng, Regional Fresh Food Manager of the Retail Platform: Since July and August, our main varieties such as Binchuan Red Grape and Sunshine Rose have matured in large quantities, and the volume of grape express delivery business has reached the peak this year, an increase of more than four times compared to May and June. More and more cheap domestic sunshine rose grapes have gone out.
Breaking through the aging time, domestic kiwifruit is “fresh” out of the circle
The application of digital technology has allowed more fruits to enter thousands of households, and domestic kiwi fruit is also one of them. Kiwifruit has high requirements for freshness and is easy to perish, but now it has become a common fruit on the table of many families. What’s the password to keep it quality? Poke the video and go to Zhouzhi, Shaanxi, which is known as the hometown of kiwifruit.
Walking into Zhouzhi, Shaanxi, the scene of picking and packing kiwifruit is very hot, and it has entered the peak picking season. On average, more than 3,000 tons of kiwifruit are shipped to various places every day. Zhouzhi kiwifruit is a product of China’s National Geographical Indication, and 1 out of every 4 kiwifruits in the national market comes from here.
Kiwi fruit has the graininess of strawberry, the sweet and sour feeling of pineapple, the soft and glutinous feeling of banana, and is rich in vitamin C, so it is called “the king of fruits”. However, there are strict requirements for picking timing. If the fruit is sold early, the fruit is too hard, and the fruit is sold late, and it is easy to rot. Today, ready-to-eat kiwifruit technology is solving this dilemma.
Yao Li, head of instant kiwifruit research and development in Zhouzhi County, Shaanxi Province: The physical temperature post-ripening technology is a process in which the fruit is converted from starch to sugar, and it can be eaten directly by consumers.
With this technology, fruit farmers can accurately grasp the picking and selling time, and many villages have started live e-commerce live broadcasts. With the increasing number of orders, how to maintain the quality of fruits and improve the timeliness of express delivery has become a new problem. Several large express sorting centers have been built in the county, where goods are received at the ground, stored in cold storage, and then packaged for unified delivery. The automated sorting line has greatly improved efficiency.
Han Pei, an e-commerce practitioner from Zhouzhi, Shaanxi: When we started our business, there were only 4 people in the company. We squatted on the ground to pack. The order quantity was small, and the packing time was long. Now we can pack 50,000 to 70,000 orders a day. The most one day we sell After 70,000 orders per day, 200,000 catties of kiwifruit are sent to all parts of the country from here. We sold a total of more than 4 million orders last year, and the sales of kiwifruit exceeded 100 million yuan.
At present, Zhouzhi County has formed a three-level logistics network service system of “full coverage of counties, towns and villages”. There are more than 100 e-commerce sales of kiwifruit, forming a new business format of “online ordering and express delivery”.
my country is a big country in fruit cultivation and consumption. Small fruits are connected to the countryside and the city at one end; production and consumption at the other.
Today, with digital means running through the whole process of fruit planting, distribution, and consumption, it not only adds the code of development and revitalization to modern agriculture, but also optimizes and enhances the consumer market, allowing consumers to have more diversified and personalized choices.