Why did the export garlic selected by the best be returned?

Recently, a batch of garlic exports from Shandong were returned to South Korea, and garlic farmers suffered huge losses, so what is the reason for the return? How should garlic farmers control risks in the face of South Korea and countries with equally high standards, strict requirements and serious trade protection?

The 2200 tons of garlic returned by South Korea is produced in Lanling County, Shandong Province, the "hometown of garlic in China". The county is a producer of high-quality garlic in China, and this batch of garlic exported to South Korea is the best. Garlic farmers have gone through a round of screening.

But even the highest quality garlic in China was forced to return after arriving at the port of Busan in South Korea because of its poor quality. After quality inspection, the Korean Institute of Agricultural Management determined that "the garlic with serious deficiency exceeded the standard and required the goods to be returned". "serious lack of garlic" refers to garlic with diseases and insect pests, injuries, poor shape, moldy and rotten garlic.

It turned out that South Korea had imported garlic from Lanling County through bidding, and the bid required that "heavy lack of garlic should account for less than 5% of all garlic". In a sampling inspection by the Korean Institute of Agricultural Control, it was found that the "heavy shortage of garlic" exceeded 5%. Liu Su, executive deputy director of the vegetable quality Supervision, Inspection and testing Center of the Ministry of Agriculture, said that in China, there is no concept of "heavy shortage point garlic". A similar concept is "defective garlic", such as first-class and special-grade vegetables, and the proportion of "defects" cannot exceed 1%.

Garlic farmers have a lot of doubts, put forward: first of all, before the delivery of garlic, according to the provisions of the tender, the Korean Agricultural and Aquatic Food Circulation Commune has carried out quality inspection of garlic and boxed transportation after passing the quality inspection, but after the goods were transported to Busan Port, it was considered as unqualified by the Korean Agricultural Management Institute. Why are the results of the two tests inconsistent? Secondly, according to the tender, it is the Korea Food and Drug Safety Agency that has the qualification to inspect the goods at the port and request return, but the reason for the South Korean side to return is that the quality inspection of the Korea Institute of Agricultural Management is not up to standard. why did the return qualification change from Korea Food and Drug Safety Agency to Korea Agricultural Management Agency?

South Korea said that the reason for the difference in quality inspection results before shipment and after arrival in Hong Kong is that the two quality inspection methods are different. The testing method of the Korea Agricultural and Aquatic Food Circulation Commune is that each bag of garlic can remove less than 3% of the whole bad garlic before quality inspection, and then carry out the test. However, the Korean Institute of Agricultural Management's quality inspection method is to extract 1/4 of the garlic from each bag for quality inspection, not to remove the bad garlic in advance, therefore, the proportion of "garlic with heavy deficiency" detected has become higher.

In addition, the Korean agency for the export of garlic is Korean agricultural products, and the bids obtained by garlic farmers are also translated by agricultural products. The tender originally provided by the Korea Agricultural and Aquatic Food Circulation Commune amounts to more than 40 pages. In the translation, the agricultural products only translated the basic content and important information. According to the original tender, the Korean Food and Drug Safety Department is responsible for garlic animal and plant quarantine, and the Agricultural Management Institute is responsible for quality inspection. The two agencies have different division of labor, and both can inspect the goods at the same time or ask for return. The mistake was caused by a South Korean agency, not by the Korean Institute of Agricultural Management. As a result, China's Ministry of Commerce said the return incident was a contractual dispute.

In fact, South Korea's lack of agricultural resources, agricultural products rely heavily on imports, but caused a contradiction: it is impossible not to import agricultural products, at the same time, we have to protect South Korean farmers. South Korea's solution is to impose large tariffs on imported agricultural products in order to maintain the competitiveness of South Korean agricultural products. In garlic, for example, South Korea announced in 1998 that it would impose tariffs of up to 315% on Chinese frozen and acetic acid pickled garlic. It was not until last November, when President Xi Jinping met with South Korean President Park Geun-hye, that he decided to exempt a variety of agricultural products, including garlic.

South Korea has been conservative and cautious in its import food policy. South Korea has nearly 10,000 terms and standards to restrict the import of agricultural products. This kind of precision testing makes it very difficult for agricultural products to pass the customs once there are quality problems. In 2013, Ningbo Port alone received 131 batches of agricultural products returned from South Korea, valued at $9.34 million, according to AQSIQ.

Experts believe that in the face of countries with strict quality inspection, such as Japan and the United States, the issue of quality is of paramount importance. the main factors hindering the export of China's agricultural products are the poor quality of agricultural products, the traditional mode of production, lax management standards, farmers' relatively weak hygiene habits and safety awareness, and so on.

According to the secretary of the Lanling County Party Committee, this is the first time for garlic farmers to do foreign trade and have no experience. Garlic export trade, which involves garlic production, processing, packaging, storage and transportation, export trade and other links, is a systematic project. In these complex links, garlic farmers can figure out only the "processing of origin in China", the rest of the links have to entrust South Korean agents.

Experts suggest that familiarity with procedures can make clear what are "uncontrollable factors", including quality sampling methods, trade protection policies, and market changes, and that experience should be learned, predictions and responses should be made in a timely manner, and omissions in any link may lead to heavy losses.