Greenhouse vegetables show quality is king amid upgrade

JINAN－With digging machines roaring and walls being built brick by brick, a new-generation greenhouse is under construction in Sanyuanzhu village, Shouguang, a major vegetable base in East China's Shandong province.

The construction site is just a stone's throw from the office of Wang Leyi, the 78-year-old secretary of the village committee of the Communist Party of China. "Whenever I have time, I will come down and check on the progress," he said.

Wang has a lot of expectations for the new vegetable greenhouse. "Shouguang should be a leader in modern agriculture. The new greenhouse will use more machinery and less labor," said Wang.

The greenhouse will be equipped with automatic curtain rolling machines and automatic sprayers, which farmers can control remotely on their phones, according to a contractor.

Wang was elected the village Party chief in 1978, just as China began its reform and opening-up drive.

With the household contract responsibility system introduced in late 1970s, which allowed farmers to own farmland through a collective, often a village committee, farmers of Sanyuanzhu village started growing fruits on barren slopes, in hope of raising income to buy food and clothes.

But they were far from being rich. Wang began to think about making fresh vegetables available all year round, even in winter.

In North China, it is cold in winter. Fresh vegetables back then were in short supply, except cabbages and radishes. Wang thus saw an opportunity.

"Developing large-scale greenhouse farming could bring customers in northern China a variety of fresh vegetables in winter, though at higher prices, and this could help us get rich quick," recalled Wang.

Growing vegetables in freezing cold in North China winter had been a headache for locals, as they had to burn coal to raise temperature inside a kind of makeshift greenhouse, and the demand for coal was around five tons each winter.

Wang went to six provinces and cities in 1988 and early 1989 to seek better vegetable growing techniques. Based on what he learnt from those visits, Wang built a new greenhouse, which did not require coal, but relied solely on sunlight for warmth in winter.

At first, most fellow villagers did not believe such greenhouses could work because they were costly.

Wang later managed to persuade 16 fellow villagers to join him in building similar greenhouses using sunlight for warmth in mid-1989, starting with growing cucumbers. In the winter that year, the 17 early birds had the first taste of success and earned much more from cucumber sales compared to those who didn't. The whole village later followed suit.

Shouguang, now a county-level city, has become a major vegetable growing base and well-known in China, since more farmers joined greenhouse vegetable growing business in the 1990s.

With the greenhouses built with the technique shared by Wang, local farmers can grow more varieties of fresh vegetables to provide the market in winter and find a way to make more money and become prosperous.

Wang has also taken the lead in expanding the market. He even brought fresh vegetables and went to Hong Kong, Russia in search of potential buyers, but was met with setbacks.

"Customers in Hong Kong did not like cucumbers with thorns, and those in Russia thought our tomatoes were too juicy," he said, adding he then realized that people from different places had different eating habits for vegetables, so their demands varied.

Wang invited top companies in the seed industry to his village, helping farmers grow new varieties of vegetables to meet the demands of global markets.

Shouguang has more than 40,000 hectares of greenhouses and trades around 8 million tons of vegetables a year. It provides Beijing with one-third of the vegetables sold in local markets.

Shouguang has been cited as a modern agricultural demonstration zone and has provided integrated vegetable growing solutions to more than 20 provincial-level regions, said Wang Lijun, vice-mayor of Shouguang.

Over the past three decades, Wang Leyi and other locals have developed several generations of greenhouses to make a good use of new and smart technology and large machinery, meeting the country's growing demand for high-quality vegetables and making good money.

There has been a growing consumer demand for green and organic vegetables in China, and more producers have turned their focus to quality over quantity.