Consumers go online to see their food grow
Print Edition
ONE spring, Li Mingtong, a university student in Changchun, capital of the northeast China’s Jilin Province, paid 500 yuan (US$75) to have a pomegranate tree organically cultivated. In the fall of that year, she received boxes containing the fruit from her tree, thousands of kilometers away in southwest China’s Yunnan Province.
“Though the pomegranates were very expensive, they are safe and taste good,” she said. Li organized the service through an online shop earlier this year. She now plans to buy “customized” vegetables grown in the suburbs of Changchun.
As people pay more attention to food safety, customized farm produce, grown without using pesticides or fertilizers, is attracting growing interest from urban consumers, especially the young.
The Internet helps to reform agriculture. Customers can rent a piece of land online and choose which varieties of vegetables they want grown there. Many farms have cameras so customers can monitor the growth of their produce on their mobile phones or computers.
“This not only ensures green food, but also offers an opportunity for our family to enjoy pastoral scenery during our free time,” said Xu Li, another Changchun resident.
“Our fruit and vegetables are all organic. We adopted a membership model for the sale and delivery of produce to our clients,” Chen Zhao, general manager of Chunjiangyan farm in Nongan County, Changchun, said at the 16th China Changchun International Agriculture and Food Fair, which ended on Sunday.
Only meeting half the demand
The farm has 47 vegetable and fruit greenhouses and 1,000 members. Each day, more than 100 Changchun residents receive vegetables from the farm, Chen said.
“Our capacity is insufficient. For example, when our cantaloupes were ready for sale, we could only meet half the demand from our customers,” he said.
According to a report released last year by the Ali Research Institute affiliated to e-commerce giant Alibaba, China had 65 million “online green consumers” in 2015, 15 times as many as in 2011.
Green products include organic and additive-free food and environmentally-friendly household commodities such as furniture and clothes.
Green consumption has spread most rapidly among young people aged from 23 to 28, according to the research.
“Our pigs have serial numbers. We have cameras in their pens so that our customers can check their condition at any time on their mobile phones,” Pei Feng, from an agricultural cooperative in Siping, said at the fair.
The pigs are fed corn and bean pulp. The cooperative does not use any antibiotics or hormones, Pei said.
China has more than 10,000 accredited green food companies producing more than 26,000 types of products, according to the China Green Food Development Center.
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