How we control farm pests without chemicals — Chinese farmer
How do you manage your farms across China with the different climate conditions and temperatures? Now we have six farms to the south of the Yangzi River and five of them are located in Guangdong Province. The other one is in Hunan Province. To the north of the river, we have five farms with four […]
How do you manage your farms across China with the different climate conditions and temperatures?
Now we have six farms to the south of the Yangzi River and five of them are located in Guangdong Province. The other one is in Hunan Province. To the north of the river, we have five farms with four located in Henan province and one in Shanxi Province, north China. I hope you now have a better understanding of our production style. We use the climate differences in northern and southern China for our productions in different places in different periods of the year with industrialisation because we manage our farms in the same way industries are managed. I would like to explain further the industrial agricultural model. We have six thousand more hectares of land for growing vegetables and the production period for them is 60 days. But we want them all at one time for instance, 100 daily. We organise our time and labour force to harvest them daily. Another important factor of our production is that we have strict requirements for standardisation of products. As you can see the vegetables all look the same in size and quality.
To get the products to look uniform, do you have to genetically modify them?
No. The food production is all done manually that technology is forbidden to be used here.
What of the seedlings?
No, these are natural products. The standardisation is achieved not by the seedlings but by the experience of the labourers who work here. In the harvest, they have a process of selection and they select vegetables of the same size and quality.
Will there be need for the crops to be modified at some point?
No, there wouldn’t be. We know that it is an advanced technology, but we haven’t applied it to our production.
You are involved with arable farming. So when you are not farming here is the land fallow?
We do pest control. After harvest, the land has a rest period of about three months from November to January or December to February. During this period, the land is deep ploughed so that pests which survive during the cold months would be dug out. This way, during the next production, there would be far less pests to worry about. This is how we control pests and not by chemicals.
What is the annual level of expert and how much is realised?
Hong Kong, Macau and Singapore are our major markets for export. We export 15 tons daily throughout the year with products from all our farms.
Do you use fertilisers or local manure?
We don’t use chemical fertilisers. We only use the organic ones because in the surrounding areas there are lots of chicken farms with wastes collected and processed here. They go through fermentation on to the stage where they are organic enough for use on the land.
If you run out organic fertilisers would you use chemical fertiliser?
Sometimes we have had to apply chemical fertiliser but that has nothing to do with cost. We have had to use it to complement the potassium or nitrogen. But before we use it, we have to be sure that the product quality from our farm is the best and people are happy with it. We are still in the process of building our brand to be famous in China and around the world.
Do you have access to soft loan and things like this?
Yes, we have access to banks for loans only after our investments and buy machines. We get them at an interest rate of 20% lower than the common interest used by other industries.
What is your motivation for agriculture?
(Laughter) It’s a long story especially now as I look healthy to you. In the past I was quite sickly and suffered from diabetes. In order to stay healthy, I sought better food and healthy vegetables. I began to plant them for myself at the time and once I started the growing I fell in love with and decided to go into mass production. I also had some ideas to add different models to the traditional agriculture practice. That was my motivation. Now I don’t have diabetes anymore because I have organic food for myself. Also, managing my own farm, I am able to exercise more and live healthy.
How many workers do you have and storage facilities?
At the moment, less than 300. With mechanisation of agricultural development, we need fewer workers than before and this is at harvest time. The machines work the other processes. For the storage facilities, we regulate so that our products are stored at low temperatures. The green plants over there are to promote a green environment and prevent pollution. Our customers have strict requirements for the products. They are called holy green plants. After these years of managing the farm, I feel it is very important for me to apply the industrial management model for agricultural production.