Leading industrial upgrading in innovation and change

If you want to ask where the apples are delicious, people are probably thinking of Yantai apples. The establishment of this kind of brand association is the necessity of Yantai Apple's pursuit of century-old quality and brand construction.

Yantai, Shandong Province, as the starting point of modern apple cultivation in China, was introduced into Western apples in 1871. After a century and a half of development, the small apple moved up the mountain and down the beach, moving west and north, provoking the industrial responsibility of enriching the people and invigorating the industry. Today, China has become the largest apple producer and consumer in the world. Yantai Apple has not only become the loudest business card in Yantai, but also become the trump fruit of Shandong fruit industry, but also set up the pride of national brand in the hearts of Chinese people.

In the past hundred years, Yantai Apple has persisted in pursuing technological innovation, variety improvement, quality improvement and brand building by virtue of its persistent spirit of innovation and "change". It has not only dominated the domestic market for a long time, but also always led the development of China's apple industry. A history of apples in Yantai is not only a history of the development of Chinese apples, but also the changing history of Yantai people wanting to change, thinking about change and seeking change in the apple industry. she embodies the joys and sorrows of Yantai people in growing apples. Today, Yantai Apple is full of industry-leading self-confidence. The international advanced modern dwarf rootstock close planting cultivation system takes the lead in the introduction of commercialization and cold chain technology, and the exploration of functional markets such as forward trading, auction trading and electronic trading is beginning to take shape. Yantai Apple stands at the top of the wave of industrial development.

A plate of apples, fragrant all over the house, either strong or light, is hidden in the memory of many people; a tree of apples, after four seasons, is engraved on the faces of millions of fruit farmers. Recently, the reporter went deep into the apple producing area of Yantai to feel the thick apple feelings in the air and explore the future of the transformation and upgrading of the apple industry.

Quality is the core of upgrading and upgrading of apple industry.

Good apples start with planting

People in Yantai entertain guests without apples, and they go on and on when talking about apples. The seeds of apples in these hundred years have been deeply buried in this city and grown into people's hearts.

It is generally accepted that Yantai apples are delicious not only because of their bright surface and good color, but also because of their crisp taste and sweet taste. Excellent quality benefits from superior geographical environment and people's unremitting pursuit of quality.

Yantai Apple is located in the core producing area of the advantageous industrial belt of Bohai Bay in China, growing up with the sea breeze and at the same latitude as the famous Washington apple producing area in the United States. With such a good resource endowment, there is no reason why Yantai people should not grow apples well.

Before the 1980s, Yantai mainly planted green bananas, red bananas and other traditional apples. Since the 1980s, Yantai has experienced many leaps in apple variety breeding, seedling breeding and orchard management, which has established its competitive advantage and industrial position under the condition of market economy.

Bai Guoqiang, director of the Yantai Municipal Bureau of Agriculture, said that what kind of variety to choose is a strategic decision that determines the trend of the entire industry. In the mid-1980s, Yantai people realized that traditional varieties must be updated, otherwise it would be difficult to adapt to the new market environment, so they decisively introduced the internationally popular Red Fuji varieties, which laid the foundation for Yantai and even the national apple industry.

Since then, Yantai has always maintained a national lead in breeding and seedling breeding. Yanfu 1Mel No. 6 Red Fuji is an outstanding one, and its variety structure is constantly enriched and optimized, which fills the gap of early and middle maturity varieties. Yantai has successively established three national professional research institutions, including the Apple breeding Center of the Ministry of Agriculture, the Fruit and Seedling quality testing Center of the Ministry of Agriculture, and the Yantai Comprehensive Test Station of the National Apple Industrial Technology system, which has become a strong support for cultivating excellent new varieties with independent intellectual property rights and promoting the upgrading of apple varieties. Yantai has also adopted a market-oriented mode of operation to set up a breeding and propagation integrated seedling group with scientific research and breeding units and leading enterprises as the main body, and the apple seedling industry has developed to a high-end and cluster, thus creating a "Silicon Valley" of China's apple seed industry.

"Yantai should take the lead in the improvement of China's apple industry." Ma Degong, director of Yantai Fruit Tree Station, which has witnessed the changes of Yantai apples over the past several decades, told reporters that since the middle and late 1990s, advanced cultivation and management techniques such as full bag cultivation and management of apples developed by their seedlings and agrotechnical personnel, wall bee pollination, friendly ecotype control of diseases and insect pests, transformation of closed orchards, growing grass and covering grasses in orchards to improve soil organic matter and efficient utilization of fertilizer and water have been transmitted to apple producing areas throughout the country. It has directly promoted the adjustment and development of the whole apple industrial structure in our country. At present, the average per unit yield, high quality fruit rate and commercial fruit rate of Yantai apple orchard are the first in the country.

However, in recent years, the situation of apple industry at home and abroad has changed greatly. With the sudden rise of apple industry in Shaanxi, Xinjiang and other places, and the increasingly fierce competition in the world apple industry and trade, Yantai apple industry itself is facing the challenge of quality upgrading.

Although on the whole, the quality of Yantai apple is still in the lead. But what we have to face is that in the orchards built in the middle and late 1980s, the fruit trees began to age gradually, the soil and ecological conditions of the orchards deteriorated, and a series of physiological diseases increased, which is also a common problem faced by most adult orchards in the country.

"the old orchards must be renovated immediately, and both new and old orchards should be upgraded by a series of modern science and technology." Bai Guoqiang said.

The reporter saw an apple orchard completely different from the traditional orchard in the demonstration garden of apple dwarf rootstock intensive cultivation model in Zhaoyuan City. The 500 mu demonstration garden is uniform and denser between plants, but 3.5 meters wide between rows and rows, and the tree is erect. The integrated use of all kinds of modern science and technology is quite different from the traditional orchard.

Wang Guangyao, mayor of Zhaoyuan City, told reporters that the old orchard has tall trees, many branches, closed canopy, poor ventilation and lighting conditions, and difficult to use machinery. In the close planting mode of dwarf rootstock, the tree shape is fine spindle and high spindle, which is not only easy to manage, easy to intensive, standardized and mechanized operation, but also has sufficient light inside the crown, better fruit color and quality, and high quality fruit rate.

Sun, a 64-year-old technician who has been growing apples all his life, is in charge of 200 mu of orchards. He said that the traditional Arbor cultivation model takes five or six years to bear fruit, while the dwarf rootstock close planting model uses large seedlings with branches to build a garden, which can blossom and bear fruit in the same year, and enter the full fruit period in three to four years, with a yield of about 4000 kilograms per mu. The integration of water and fertilizer and harmless prevention and control of diseases and insect pests can be fully utilized.

The reporter saw that Lao Sun alone can operate a remote control car to complete multiple planting management links.

In most traditional orchards, farming, fertilization, irrigation, spraying and pruning are almost done manually, with apple bagging alone costing dozens of yuan per hour. At present, most fruit growers in Yantai are over 50 years old, and the question of who will plant apples a few years later is in front of them. Therefore, mechanization is the inevitable trend of the apple industry.

Zhang Jiangting, secretary of the Yantai Municipal CPC Committee, said that if Yantai Apple wants to continue to lead the industry development and realize its dream of becoming a world-famous brand, it must maintain its unique industrial and market advantages, pay special attention to quality and safety issues, and put quality improvement in the first place.

During the interview, the reporter met the first batch of experts specially appointed by China's "Foreign Special Thousand talents Plan" and Bulgaria's famous fruit tree expert Atanas Bragov. This burly, generous "foreigner" has supported Yantai Apple with technology for several years and is loved by Yantai fruit growers. Bragoff spoke highly of the construction of the technical system of Yantai apple industry and said that he would make new efforts for the development of Yantai fruit industry. He said that the Yantai apple industry has the foundation and potential to build world-famous apples.

At present, the Yantai municipal party committee and municipal government have comprehensively deployed the strategy of upgrading and upgrading the apple industry, and plan to explore in terms of varieties, seedlings, cultivation models, and the construction of demonstration gardens in about eight years, so as to build Yantai apples into a high-grade apple product base and world-class apple products.

Now in Yantai, 70% of rural areas and 50% of farmers are growing or operating apples. The apple industry absorbs more than 2 million jobs, and the apple industry has become the top priority of Yantai's agricultural modernization.

Expand the value space of Apple industry

The whole industry chain is the future to maintain competitiveness.

The annual output is 4.95 million tons, the total storage capacity of air-conditioned storage and cold air storage is more than 3.42 million tons, and the annual export volume of fresh fruit is 240000 tons, accounting for about 1x4 of the whole country. Yantai has become the largest production, processing and export base of Red Fuji apples in the country. However, the transformation from "quantity benefit" to "quality benefit" is a strategic reality faced by Yantai Apple and even China's apple industry.

The reporter saw during the visit that decentralized planting and management is still the main way of apple production in Yantai, which is not conducive to standardization and the realization of the integration of production, supply and marketing. The problems such as the utilization rate of modern orchard management technology and the low proportion of high-grade fine fruits are prominent, which will weaken the market competitiveness of end products and make it difficult to change the weak position of fruit farmers in the industrial value chain sharing.

Meng Fanli, mayor of Yantai City, believes that it is necessary to strengthen the training of new agricultural operators, speed up the transformation of production and management mode, improve supporting industries, enhance the level of processing, and achieve the development of the whole industrial chain, so as to expand the space of industrial value.

Walking into Yantai Quanyuan Food Co., Ltd., which is located in Qixia, the "capital of apples", the reporter immediately felt the vitality of the main body of the market. Jiang Yanquan, chairman of the board who is familiar with market operation, told reporters: "there is not much difference between Yantai apple picking and foreign famous apples, but how to maintain this quality in the mouth of end consumers is a major challenge for us." This involves postharvest treatment, cold chain and many other aspects, which need the main body of the market to do. This is also a key link of market competitiveness in the future. "

Jiang Yanquan's company has a storage capacity of 40,000 tons of apples and the storage technology of fruits and vegetables has reached the international advanced level. With the support of the government, the company has also developed the Apple Internet of things Security traceability Service platform, which transparently manages the production, processing, storage, transportation and sales of Apple, so that consumers can have a comprehensive and intuitive understanding of the whole process of Apple from planting to sales.

Chen Zhaokuan, mayor of Qixia City, said that Qixia Apple has fully achieved quarterly production, annual sales and annual supply. On the one hand, the government actively supports the development of cold chain, packaging and other related enterprises, and guides enterprises to carry out high-level and standardized management in accordance with international standards, and encourages enterprises to improve their scale and grade. On the other hand, the commercial treatment method should be carried out uniformly, and the cold chain technology should be used to deal with the picked apples to ensure that the hardness, moisture and hygiene conditions of the stored apples are in line with international standards. The price of Qixia apple listed in the gap period is 1-4 yuan higher than that of the picking period, which can increase the income of fruit farmers by more than 1.4 billion yuan a year.

Although Yantai apple is mainly fresh food, the trend of building processing chain and changing scattered rough processing into large-scale deep processing and ecological circular processing is obvious. Yantai has introduced and cultivated fruit juice, fruit wine, fruit vinegar, apple chips, pectin and other deep processing enterprises, the products are exported to the United States, the European Union and other markets, at the same time, the construction of a "livestock-marsh-fruit-bacteria" compound ecological agriculture system.

In the interview, the reporter also saw the important role of cooperatives in improving the level of apple industrialization. Many cooperatives have done a lot in accelerating the promotion of technology, providing comprehensive services and adjusting the industrial structure.

Zhaoyuan City Fukai Fruit Professional Cooperative has a fruit repository of 2500 tons, transferring 2676 mu of orchards and land, driving 1450 fruit farmers and driving an area of 6000 mu of orchards. The unified purchase rate of inputs in cooperatives reached 80%, the unified sales rate of fruits reached 82%, and the income of members was 30% higher than that of non-members, making it the first professional farmer cooperative in the province with the right to import and export.

"strengthening market analysis and correctly formulating sales strategies are the most important tasks of cooperatives." The person in charge of the cooperative told the reporter that in the past two years, the initial purchase price of the Apple market is relatively high, and some fruit farmers have the psychology of hoarding goods and waiting to rise, but the market risk is also gradually increasing. The cooperative society provides timely guidance on the purchase and sales situation, and sells fruits through agricultural super docking, fruit promotion meetings and other channels, each household can sell an extra 12000 yuan.

"in fact, the high efficiency of the most famous apple producing areas in the world depends on modern technology on the one hand and large-scale investment on the other." Xu Shaoning, vice mayor of Yantai, said that the financial allocation of modern apple industry in Yantai increased by another 10 million yuan in 2014. At the same time, the central and provincial finance will also further increase support, and the total amount of financial support directly used for the apple industry will reach 53 million yuan.

The reporter saw that the leading fruit enterprises have formed a cluster development, which is the main force for Yantai apple industry to maintain its vitality and competitiveness. At present, the city's apple industry has 23 key leading enterprises of agricultural industrialization above the provincial level. By 2020, it is estimated that the storage and post-natal processing capacity of fresh fruit will reach 4 million tons. At the beginning of this year, Yantai issued suggestions to speed up the upgrading and upgrading of the apple industry, formally proposing to cultivate "Yantai Apple" into a world brand by 2020, and to build Yantai into the country's largest modern fruit industry cultivation base and storage and processing export base.

Improve the construction of modern market system and brand marketing system

One hundred years of Brand leads the process of Industrial Modernization

Many business owners in Yantai lamented that the current Apple market environment has been completely different. Fundamental changes have taken place in market channels and marketing methods. In many places, apple production is listed as provincial governor's project and mayor's project, which is so powerful that it is close to Yantai Apple.

Yantai has always adhered to the combination of the domestic market and the international market, established and improved a five-level sales network of leading enterprises, major marketers, cold storage owners, professional cooperatives and brokers, and established long-term supply relations with more than 500 large and medium-sized supermarkets and professional markets. Through the Yantai Apple producers and Merchants Association, more than 20 large fruit purchasing dealers across the country are invited to settle in Yantai.

Xu Shaoning believes that the existing traditional agricultural trade market model has been far from being able to meet the needs of the rapid development of the market economy. The contradiction between the pattern of small-scale production and the increasing degree of organization of postpartum storage and transportation, processing, wholesale, retail and other links is prominent. It is imperative to establish a market supply and demand and related policy information trading platform with wide coverage, large amount of information, timely and fast as soon as possible. In fact, the accumulation of market risk also accelerates the establishment of a modern market system and the improvement of Apple's marketing model.

Yantai people are soberly aware of this and have made active explorations in forward trading, auction trading, electronic trading and other markets. Apple market price discovery function, information disclosure function, quality traceability function, credit guarantee function, logistics distribution function has been gradually improved.

In the business hall of the Yantai Apple Trading Center of the Bohai Commodity Exchange, timely Apple prices and trading conditions are constantly scrolling on the big screen. This is the first spot variety of Apple listed in China, which opens a new marketing model for Apple.

The head of the exchange told reporters that in the traditional marketing model, merchants need to spend a lot of cash to buy and store Apple locally every year, and whether it is profitable or not can only be decided by betting on the market. At present, the Bohai Commodity Exchange has more than 600 comprehensive member organizations and more than 2000 business outlets, which has built a national marketing network. Using this platform, buyers and sellers are directly connected, reducing the number of middlemen and increasing the sales revenue of the product itself by about 5% to 15%. What's more, through the function of "hedging", we can lock in Apple's sales profit in advance and solve the income risk brought to apple traders and fruit growers due to the fluctuation of apple market price.

From the launch of the platform at the end of 2012 to November 2013, the total Apple transaction volume was about 710 million lots, equivalent to 7.1 million tons of Apple's total weight, with a total transaction value of more than 52 billion yuan. However, compared with the apple production in Yantai and even the whole country, it can not completely solve the problem. To this end, Yantai is preparing to build the world's first Apple auction center, with a view to establishing a large market that dominates the country.

According to the person in charge of the project, this new fruit trading model adopts membership organization principles and organizational forms, innovatively merges the third-party auction market model with the supply chain management model, and cooperates with the logistics distribution system to create a large-scale professional fruit spot auction market covering China and even the world, which integrates information flow, business flow, logistics and capital flow.

In the current market construction, the establishment of a solid brand image is becoming more and more important. Sha Shengtao, deputy director of Yantai Agriculture Bureau, said that Yantai Apple brand construction started the earliest, but the brand positioning should be further clarified in the new market environment. The scale of Yantai Apple can not be expanded indefinitely, high grade is the pursuit of Yantai people. According to the survey, Qixia Apple, the leader of Yantai Apple, accounts for more than 60% of the domestic high-end market, including more than 80% of the market share in Beijing.

The Yantai municipal government has taken fruit promotion as a major and important event of the government for 13 years in a row, and successively issued documents such as opinions on promoting agricultural brand construction, Yantai brand-name agricultural products identification and management measures, and regard apples as the main content of agricultural brand construction. Since 2001, the municipal government has put forward special funds for 13 consecutive years and held a series of activities such as Yantai Apple promotion meetings in more than a dozen countries and regions and more than 30 cities, which has effectively enhanced the brand image and popularity of Yantai Apple.

The market competitiveness of an industry and an enterprise depends on the product, and the core is the brand. Only by concentrating efforts on cultivating superior industries and products and building strong agricultural brands, can we "attack the city and pull out the stockade" in the increasingly fierce market competition and fundamentally improve the overall quality and core competitiveness of the industry.

How to deal with the relationship between Yantai Apple as a regional public brand and other Apple brands in the region is an important issue in Yantai Apple brand construction. In practice, the specific title of the century-old brand of "Yantai Apple" tends to be diluted, which weakens the brand influence and market competitiveness of "Yantai Apple", which is not beneficial to the whole industry.

At present, Yantai Agricultural Bureau is formulating Apple brand strategic planning, creating brand image, refining brand communication symbols, planning brand development model and management system, formulating the implementation path of brand strategy, and strengthening top-level design at the strategic level. to create the parent brand of "Yantai Apple". At the same time, activities such as the selection of "Top Ten Brands of Yantai Apple", "Summit of Yantai Apple production and Marketing Alliance" and "Top Ten Dealers of Yantai Apple" have also been carried out one after another. encourage and guide fruit enterprises and cooperatives to cultivate, create and integrate a number of enterprise sub-brands, form a healthy development pattern in which parent brands and sub-brands promote and complement each other, and promote the continuous growth and strengthening of Yantai Apple brand groups.

Cultural factor is the soul of brand construction. For example, when it comes to French wine, people think of France's long history and romantic and elegant way of life; when it comes to animal husbandry in Australia, people think of the natural scenery and inclusive national culture of this "country on sheep's back". Bai Guoqiang said: it is necessary to combine the creation of a strong Yantai Apple brand with the traditional excellent regional culture to create a brand culture, so that consumers can enjoy material enjoyment at the same time, but also fully appreciate the Yantai amorous feelings of the Gold Coast, a long history, and unique culture.

After a hundred years of experience, Yantai Apple has developed steadily just at the right time. Following the drumbeat of the change of the times, it is walking out its own path in the aspects of cultivation system reform, market subject cultivation, functional market construction and so on, and leads the industry to develop continuously. May Yantai Apple be deeply rooted in a hundred years of apple culture, absorb the nutrients of the development of the times, and constantly express new history and resplendence.