Economy

Fresh veggies, straight from the farm

By Wu Wencong (China Daily)
Updated: 2011-05-17 15:33

Later that day they had a meeting and decided to build a 40-square-meter permanent crested booth for Liang, allowing him to increase to 40 the types of vegetables he can offer.

Lu said the stall will act as a model for the whole neighborhood, and the trial may even be expanded across the district. "What we can do to help the trial work is to offer a free delivery point to the farmers, and provide them with any help they need," Lu told METRO.

She has found a place near the booth where Liang can live.

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And whenever the business is busy, the gatekeeper on duty will help Liang run the stall.

All the vegetables sold in the community come from an agricultural park in Zhuzhuang village, Daxing district. The village has 200 closed sheds, covering more than 13 hectares, 70 of which were contracted to Liang Jianping and his two brothers.

"After the slump in sales this year, I've been trying hard to sell my brothers' vegetables. The most difficult part was not the lack of a market, but transport," said Liang Bin, Liang Jianping's younger brother.

Liang Bin said consumers usually need vegetables to arrive at shops between 8:30 am to 9:30 am, a time when vans without a permit cannot enter the city center; and the quota for new permissions is small.

Liang Bin decided to help his brothers, and other farmers, by calling on his 10 years of experience in new media.

"Farmers have no sense of marketing. They will only grow what sold best last year. Their fate is always in other people's hands due to this unplanned production," he told METRO.

He plans to analyze market demand so he can help farmers plan the types and quantities of vegetables to be planted for the next season. "Farmers are chipping away their vegetables because the income gained from them is too low," he said. "It's not a new phenomenon. The worst problem is that prices of agricultural products have never matched their value."

Liang Bin said he does not understand why some people spend thousands of yuan on cosmetics, but describe vegetables that cost 1 yuan as expensive.

If the solution is to enable consumers to understand farmers and their work, then perhaps the best way to do that is to create a direct link between the two groups, just as the trial stall in Fengtai district has done.