Clusters of berries. [Photo/VCG]

The International Blueberry Organization is bullish on the prospects for the Chinese blueberry market, which is benefiting from huge demand on the part of Chinese consumers and an excellent production base in Qujing, Yunnan province.

“Qujing enjoys a unique natural environment and wild climate, which is suitable for the growth of crops. The blueberries produced in Qujing have a high quality, with high sugar content and hardness,” said Zhang Zulin, the deputy governor of Yunnan province, on Monday at the opening ceremony of the 2017 International Blueberry Organization Summit.

Zhang added that the Qujing blueberries could be sold on the market in April, which just makes up for the supply gap from international markets during that month.

Peter McPherson, chairman of the IBO, said China’s blueberry production industry stands out due to its huge market potential.

“The good thing that we’ve found is that the Chinese consumer loves blueberries,” said McPherson, adding that blueberries are an emerging industry in China and he is bullish about the prospects for the market.

IBO, a global organization, is aimed at bringing together leaders from around the blueberry world in all segments of the industry, collecting and sharing information and fostering a common goal of increased worldwide blueberry consumption.

It is the first time that the IBO Summit was held in China. Chile, Mexico, Australia, Argentina and Uruguay have previously hosted the summit.

As one of the leading blueberry production bases in China, Qujing has already planted 870 hectares of blueberries, representing 50 percent of the total blueberry production in Yunnan.

In 2020, blueberry production will reach 2,500 metric tons in Qujing and reach 250 million yuan ($38.3 million) in output.

Dong Baotong, the mayor of Qujing, said the government is making great efforts to develop the whole industrial chain related to blueberries, including the R&D of blueberry varieties, breeding of seedlings, planting, storage and sorting, logistics and retail, making Qujing a leading capital of blueberry production.

“In general, Yunnan province has the unique opportunity to produce blueberries during early season until the summer period if with the right variety, the right genetics, the right cultural system and right technology. It’s also possible to produce some in winter and spring. And that’s why a lot of international companies are looking for it in Yunnan,” said Cort Brazelton, founder of IBO and the director of Fall Creek Farm & Nursery Inc.

“I have enormous confidence of the blueberry growth in Chinese market. Like all other international companies, we are all excited and we have strong desire to work with the Chinese regional governments to help Chinese blueberry industry sustainable.”

BEIJING – China will pay farmers to turn animal poo into fertiliser and power, the Ministry of Agriculture said on Wednesday, as Beijing cracks down on agricultural pollution that has for years leaked into rivers and lakes, angering Chinese residents.

China will give farmers subsidies to build animal waste processing facilities to make fertilisers or to treat manure so it’s safe for disposal, and to install biogas plants that use methane to generate electricity, according a government plan announced on Aug 1.

The plan includes setting up recycling programmes by 2020 in 200 major counties that have livestock farms. That’s less than half the 586 major counties the government says have hog and poultry farms.

The agriculture ministry gave no details about the size of the subsidies, but the move could be a big step towards curbing chemical fertiliser use and cutting water pollution.

“We will help the farmers fully understand how organic fertiliser can improve energy efficiency and the environment,” said Zhong Luqing, director of the fertiliser department at the ministry, at a briefing on Wednesday.

Biogas technology, which can help save on electrical costs, is too expensive for many farmers unless the government helps.

Those researching and using organic fertiliser will also get preferential treatment on loans, taxes, power use and land rent, Zhong said.

Getting rid of animal waste is a major headache for livestock producers worldwide, partly because of the strong odour and damage caused to the atmosphere by the release of harmful gases. Run-off containing animal wastes can also seep into the water table and contaminate rivers and lakes.

In China, how to better dispose of animal waste has become a particular problem due to the fast growth of poultry and hog farming over the past decade to meet demand for higher quality meat. Chinese livestock farms generate nearly 4 billion tonnes of waste annually, according to the agriculture ministry.

“We will strengthen policy support and increase subsidies to support farmers to use organic fertiliser … especially large-scale farmers, family farms and cooperatives,” Zhong said.

The plan is part of Beijing’s effort to limit chemical fertilisers and pesticides, which have contaminated soil and water. China uses about one-third of the world’s fertilisers.

Beijing has said it was targeting zero growth of chemical fertiliser and pesticide by 2020. It has urged farmers to use less chemical fertiliser and turn to animal manure instead.

DATE:2017-09-04       SOURCE:China Daily

China is all set to commercially launch a hybrid rice variety in Pakistan which has 18 tons per hectare yield or more than 150 maunds per acre.

The revolutionary rice seed was recently developed by the Chinese researchers under the guidance of world’s leading agriculture scientist Professor Yuan Longping, who is commonly known as father of hybrid rice in the world.

The new rice variety would help Pakistani farmers to significantly increase per acre yield and hence the country would be able to export more rice to other countries, including China, in future.

“We will be happy to share the seed variety with Pakistan which is our great friend,” said the octogenarian Professor Yuan in a rare conversation with a group of journalists. The sitting with him was jointly arranged by the Guard Agriculture Research and Services (Pvt) Limited, pioneer in introducing hybrid rice in the country, and China’s top agriculture research company, Yuan Longping Hi-Tech Industries.

Shah Rukh Malik and Rizwan Yousaf, Guard Group’s executives, said, “Currently, China imports 30 per cent to 40 per cent of rice from Pakistan. The new rice variety will help country to enhance rice exports to the neighbouring country in the years to come.”

Hybrid rice variety is being cultivated in some parts of Sindh and Balochistan as the fields in tropical districts of Pakistan are highly friendly for paddy farming. The Guard Group in collaboration with Chinese researchers is making efforts to develop the hybrid variety for Punjab’s regions and at the same time it has launched awareness programs for Sindh and Balochistan farmers to increase the area under hybrid rice.

The average production of presently sown hybrid rice in China and Pakistan is around 7-8 tons per hectares, almost 15 per cent high than the conventional rice’s yield. Terming new variety his lifelong dream, Professor Yuan said the seed was the toughest ever in commercial large scale trials in terms of yield.

The father of hybrid rice is highly regarded in China as well as in the world for his contribution in ending the food crisis in the globe. The United Nations (UN) Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, the UN World Intellectual Property Organization, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) honoured him with different titles and awards during past four decades. He received the 2004 World Food Prize for his breakthrough achievement in developing the genetic materials and technologies essential for breeding high-yielding hybrid rice varieties. He continues his innovative scientific work as Director-General of the China National Hybrid Rice Research and Development Center in Changsha, Hunan Province, China. He is widely acknowledged as the first person to discover how to achieve fast growth with greater yield and stress resistance. In 1964, he happened to find a natural hybrid rice plant that had obvious advantages over others and in 1973, he successfully cultivated a type of hybrid rice species having 15 per cent 20 per cent more yield than the conventional ones.

As area of hybrid rice in the country is about 200,000 hectares ( around 450,000 acres), Professor Yuan believed it could be significantly increased. He encouraged young Pakistani researchers and agriculture scientists to take benefits from the Chinese expertise in the field of agriculture science. He believed Pakistan was good country and had great potential of growth and development.

The Guard Group also organised the visit of ISKY chemicals company which is one of the world’s largest exporters of agri chemicals. Founded in 1994, ISKY is a major supplier of sulphur and related chemicals to Asia, Africa, Americas, Europe and Oceania. The company management offered its full cooperation to Pakistan in the field of agriculture science.

Source: The Nation. Date: 2017-08-24

You searched for ‘beef.’ Did you mean ‘beer?’” That was the suggestion the Costco Online website helpfully offered when we tapped in “beef” in the search bar. In total, we only hit on 11 items: six Kobe beef products, one vegan meat substitute, three dog foods, and an emergency food kit. For the Kobe beef, prices ranged from C$329 for 10 steaks to C$89.99 for 48 Kobe Classic Beef Mini Burgers. Deliveries are promised within five days.

Does it matter to Canadian beef producers that a major online seller in Canada has only six specialty unprocessed beef products that are going to be delivered next week? Probably not. The danger is that we assume that our key global markets work that way. Three hundred million Chinese have begun to shop online, ushering in a commercial era where speed and price dominate everything. In this new “lazy person’s economy,” consumers can reasonably expect to order it in the morning and get it in the afternoon. “Tmall supermarket,” an online food seller and part of the Tmall online platform owned by Alibaba, has been growing at 300 per cent per year. In 2015, the platform did 10 billion yuan (C$1.9 billion) in sales and expects to do 100 billion in 2017. “JD.com supermarket” (chaoshi.jd.com) not only expects to reach 100 billion in sales, it wants to help at least 10 brands do over 10 billion yuan (C$1.9 billion) in sales and to help another 100 brands do over 100 million (C$19 million). Our competitors are already selling significant amounts of country-branded beef on these e-commerce platforms in China. And this article is only talking about China; the online opportunities are truly global in scope.

So let’s speculate about the potential size of China’s online retail market for beef. Beef is marketed in China as a nutritious high-protein, low-fat and low-cholesterol food. In 2016, Chinese consumed 5.9 million tons of beef and veal (Euromonitor numbers; some Chinese statistics put this number over seven million tons), a 24 per cent increase over the past five years. Consumption of retail beef was less, 1.9 million tons in 2016, but that number too represented an astronomical 24 per cent increase over the past five years. Let’s imagine that retail beef consumption continues to grow yearly at five per cent (as it did in 2016) until 2020, giving us consumption of about 2.4 million tons of store-sold beef. By 2020, online sales will likely account for 20 per cent of retail sales according to some projections. If online sales of fresh food continue apace with everything else, Chinese will be buying almost 500,000 tons of beef online in only a few years’ time. If on average a frozen kilogram of Canadian meat exported to China last year was $7.50, we are talking about a potential export market of almost four billion dollars.

So how does it all work? At the present, there are three main established channels on the Internet to market quality Canadian beef to Chinese consumers. “Comprehensive” business-to-customer platforms like Tmall.com and JD.com allow businesses to deal directly with customers; they use third-party logistics companies for shipping. Next, online wholesale companies like 1688.com import overseas products and then sell to distributors. Companies like yhd.com and womai.com employ a “vertical” model and focus on fresh and frozen foods. These companies have their own distribution networks. Chinese consumers want access to high-quality beef imported directly from local production regions. Taken together, the three platforms are giving consumers the choice they demand.

It is no surprise that competition for this wave of savvy, internationally oriented Chinese consumers has picked up. How is Canada doing? The authors of this article chose to investigate beef sales on Tmall.com, the largest business-to-customer e-commerce platform. Inputting “country name” and “beef,” we found the following monthly country-specific sales figures for May 2017. The numbers are not encouraging.

The Canadian government has taken this challenge very seriously. In November 2014, Stephen Harper met with Jack Ma, owner of Alibaba and parent company of Tmall in China. Harper’s visit, perfectly timed for November 11, China’s “Double Eleven” deep discount day, helped sell 90,000 Nova Scotia lobsters in one day. On June 11, 2015, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada signed a memorandum with yhd.com to establish a Canada pavilion on the site. In September 2016, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau visited Alibaba’s Xixi campus, met with Ma amidst great media fanfare, and announced the establishment of a Canadian pavilion on the Tmall website. The AAFC and the commercial section at the China mission are already dedicating staff to e-commerce markets for Canadian food products. But it would be a grave mistake to wait for our government to establish virtual Canadian pavilions on well-established e-commerce platforms so we can add our beef products to maple syrup, ice wine, and frozen lobster offerings already there. Instead, firms have to actively anticipate where the online beef market is going.

So how do we move ourselves up the rankings? First of all, when Canadians sell their products into the Chinese market, they must remember that online supermarkets like Tmall.com and JD.com have already begun to displace and radically alter the way their brick-and-mortar counterparts do business. Prices at online supermarkets are more transparent than in their offline counterparts. Online brand loyalty for quality food products is high. Online supermarket customers are now exploring augmented reality features, visiting kiosks, writing on experience walls, and interacting with each other. Social showrooming is supplementing the offline supermarket experience with online activities and social media campaigns. Future beef brands that somehow exploit, say, health claims about iron, the pristine natural environment, or the specific tastes of the female demographic, will have to engage online supermarket consumers too. Just because online sales are somewhere between 10 and 20 per cent does not mean we only need to spend 10 per cent of our energy on online strategy.

Canadian firms selling beef will have to develop robust online relationships with young, discerning Chinese consumers via micro-blogging site Weibo, instant messaging app Wechat and other social media. Firms must learn to develop rich, original content about their products. In other words, they must gather, create, refine and disseminate information about nutrition, traceability and production conditions, then create events and activities where customers will interact with what they see.

Firms are going to find it is hard to do it all on their own. Effective firms will partner with social media platforms, engage thought leaders, and participate in virtual marketing campaigns like the country pavilion. In this information-rich environment, the Canada brand and the maple leaf symbol do not provide the kick they once did. Uruguay’s traceability system, Australia’s “grass-fed sustainability,” or even the Brazilian “bauru” sandwich all provide consumers with competing narratives that have to be countered with careful, thoughtful online brand development activities.

Meanwhile, Chinese consumers now buy beef products direct from overseas producer regions: information technology and improved logistical infrastructure have drastically reduced middleman segments of the supply chain. So “Farm–Cross-border e-commerce platform–consumer” transactions are now a reality through “Tmall International” and “JD.com Global.” These direct-to-consumer platforms may inspire us to look at our competitors and wonder “Who is getting online in China first?” “Whose government has managed to reduce the most Chinese red tape?” This would be a dangerous way to measure our success. The Chinese author of this article, director of an e-commerce research centre in a Chinese university, has provided training to Chinese farmers about how to directly market their agricultural products online to urban consumers. Chinese consumers increasingly expect to be able to deal directly with agriculture-producing regions, both domestic and international. We have to meet the expectations of Chinese consumers or someone else will.

“If you miss out on China, if you miss out on developing countries in Asia, if you miss out on e-commerce, you are missing out on the future.” That is what Jack Ma, executive chairman of the Alibaba Group, told 3,000 owners of small- and medium-sized business owners in the U.S. in June 2017. Ma went on to provide some statistics that stunned his audience. Each year, China consumes 600 million pigs and seven billion chickens. An online platform can sell 90,000 Canadian lobsters in a single day. And he added, “Those lobsters can be delivered from Canada to Chinese homes in 72 hours.”

Access to e-commerce markets in China may not be the only thing that the Canadian beef industry has to worry about. But the future of the world’s largest online market for food is certainly worth some thought.

Source: Canadian Cattlemen. Date: 2017-08-22

China is considering reviewing a beef import agreement with Namibia, the country’s ambassador to Namibia Zhang Yiming said on Tuesday, raising the possibility that restrictions could be eased.

A 2015 import agreement between Windhoek and Beijing stipulates that beef from Namibia must come from areas that are free of disease, including bovine pleuropneumonia (lung sickness), Lumpy Skin Disease (LSD) and bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), commonly known as mad cow disease.

Namibia had expected to start exporting bone-in beef to China last year, making it the only African country allowed to export beef to the country, but an outbreak of LSD in July last year halted that.

Local media reports suggested last year that Windhoek might have blundered by agreeing to China’s conditions regarding LSD as the country might never be able to meet that requirement since it suffers from sporadic outbreaks of the disease.

Zhang told reporters in Windhoek on Tuesday that his country was prepared to renegotiate the text of the agreement.

“Our embassy has already sent a report back to Beijing requesting a technical team to come to Namibia so that we can renegotiate this agreement to make it more flexible,” the Ambassador said.

LSD is transmitted through insect bites and can take up to six months to heal.

Exports to China can only start after a 12 month disease-free period.

Namibia currently exports its beef to many countries, including the European Union and Norway.

Source: Reuters. Date: 2017-08-23