Visitors taste green food from Suiling, a county of Heilongjiang
Province, at a kiosk at the 18th China Harbin Fair for Trade and
Economic Cooperation.
Heilongjiang is not only one of the granaries of the country,
but also among its first provinces to adopt environmentally
friendly plantation methods.
The province has the highest plantation acreage, output and cash
crop production in the country.
With its fertile land and high mechanization level in
agriculture, the province is now switching much of its attention to
green food, which boasts high added value and sells well both in
the domestic as well as international markets.
Sun Jingfeng, deputy director of a leading group in charge of
the green food industry, under the Heilongjiang Provincial
Agricultural Committee, says the province's green food output was
18.36 million tons in 2006, almost quadruple of that in 2000. Its
revenue, on the other hand, increased six times to 47.6 billion
yuan (US$6.26 billion).
"The green food industry has already become the sixth backbone
industry in Heilongjiang. Petrochemicals, equipment manufacturing,
pharmaceuticals, energy and forestry are the other five," Sun
says.
Green food is grown on 3.12 million hectares in Heilongjiang,
that is, nearly one-third of the province's arable land, with a
large number of farms being labeled green food parks in accordance
with national standards, he says.
The number of green food companies has tripled to 403 in the
last six years till the end of 2006, and 46 of them had revenue of
more than 100 million yuan (US$13.15 million) a year. More products
from the province are meeting the country's green or organic food
criteria.
Last year alone, 1,122 got the approval, recording a
year-on-year increase of 6.5 percent.
The province has the ambition of becoming a global green food
giant, and has plans to make all its yields meet the national
standards for the use of pesticides by the end of this year, Sun
says.
"This means pesticide residue in Heilongjiang's agri-products
will pass the national inspection test and pose no harm to
health."
He expects the overseas sale of green food to reach 3.2 million
tons in the first six months of the year and earn a revenue of more
than 9 billion yuan (US$1.18 billion). "Our main overseas markets
are neighboring Russia and the Republic of Korea, as well as
Southeast Asian countries."
But Heilongjiang still needs to take some steps to tap the
European Union and US markets because they are more lucrative, even
though they have a much higher health criteria.
Green food kiosks have become a hotspot at the ongoing 18th
China Harbin Fair for Trade and Economic Cooperation, drawing
thousands of visitors from around the world. Green food companies
actually take up almost one-third of all the kiosks, Sun says.
The total amount of transaction just on Saturday should give an
idea about how big the green food industry in Heilongjiang has
become: 16 green food contracts signed for a whopping 6.86 billion
yuan (US$900 million).
(China Daily June 18, 2007)
