Opportunities and challenges coexist with good prospects but many problems in the cultivation of traditional Chinese medicine

On August 26th, the political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee held a meeting to examine and approve the outline of the "healthy China 2030" plan. Under the attention and promotion of the state, the health awareness of the people is accelerating, and the traditional Chinese medicine with the characteristics of "curing disease and protecting health" will certainly get people's attention, and the cultivation of traditional Chinese medicine has a good prospect. However, while meeting the new opportunities, we will also face many difficulties.

Xi Jinping put forward four major principles to help healthy China, scientific development, but also to adhere to the equal importance of traditional Chinese and western medicine!

To adhere to scientific development also lies in attaching equal importance to traditional Chinese and western medicine and promoting the complementary and coordinated development of traditional Chinese medicine and western medicine. Traditional Chinese medicine is not only the treasure of ancient Chinese science, but also the key to open the treasure house of Chinese civilization. In December 2015, Xi Jinping wrote a letter congratulating the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Academy of traditional Chinese Medicine, pointing out that at present, the revitalization and development of traditional Chinese medicine is ushering in a good time for the revitalization and development of traditional Chinese medicine. I hope that the broad masses of Chinese medicine workers will enhance their national self-confidence and courageously scale the heights of medicine, deeply explore the quintessence of the treasure house of traditional Chinese medicine, give full play to the unique advantages of traditional Chinese medicine, promote the modernization of Chinese medicine, and promote Chinese medicine to the world. At the National Health and Health Conference on August 19, 2016, Xi Jinping once again stressed the development of traditional Chinese medicine: efforts should be made to realize the creative transformation and innovative development of the culture of health preservation of traditional Chinese medicine.

The prospect of planting traditional Chinese medicine is good-"authentic" has an absolute advantage.

As a special economic crop, traditional Chinese medicine has strict authenticity and selectivity to the ecological environment. The environmental quality directly affects the quality of traditional Chinese medicine, while the quality of traditional Chinese medicine not only directly affects the pharmacological efficacy and human health, but also involves the quality and safety of traditional Chinese medicine preparations. Authentic, is also authentic, that is, the effect is authentic, accurate and reliable.

Authentic medicinal materials refer to the medicinal materials produced in specific natural conditions and ecological environment, because the production is more concentrated, cultivation techniques, harvesting and processing are paid more attention to, so that compared with those produced in other areas of the same kind of medicinal materials, it has the characteristics of good quality and good curative effect. According to statistics, there are more than 200 kinds of traditional authentic medicinal materials, and the production quantity and output value of authentic medicinal materials account for more than 80% of the cultivated medicinal materials, and the curative effect is remarkable, the history is long, and the occurrence rate in the formula is the highest.

Most of the authentic medicinal materials are "one real estate, used all over the country", scattered all over the country, with the production and marketing characteristics of self-collection (planting, raising), self-collection, self-control and self-sale. The formation of traditional distribution centers is either related to the origin of authentic medicinal materials, or to the influence of famous doctors and medicine kings, or to convenient transportation, or to the mass base of fairs and temple fairs. For example, Yunnan produces Panax notoginseng, Gastrodia elata, Dendrobium candidum, Dianzhonglou, etc., Qi Mu Xiang, Qi Baizhi, Yuxian produces Yunanxing and Yubai Fuzi, Sichuan Jiangyou produces Fuzi, Guanxian produces Chuanxiong, Zhangjiakou is rich in ephedra and licorice, and Shaodong, Hunan produces mandarin bamboo. These producing areas have a long history of processing, and the medicinal materials produced are of good quality.

The difficulties encountered in the cultivation of traditional Chinese medicine:

I. the problem varieties in the market of traditional Chinese medicine are seriously degraded.

This is one of the important factors affecting the quality of authentic medicinal materials. It is specifically reflected in the weakening of drought resistance, cold resistance, pest resistance and drug resistance or precocious maturity of some authentic medicinal materials. Such as Panax notoginseng, root rot rarely occurred in the past, now not only the incidence of root rot is increasing, but also the resistance to pesticides is also increasing.

Second, lack of awareness of "brand", unable to protect high-quality medicinal materials

Authentic medicine is also a commodity, since it is a commodity, it should have a brand. Gastrodia elata, how many people know which product it is and which is the best? Gastrodia elata is also produced in Yunnan, Sichuan, Guizhou, Shaanxi, Hunan and Hubei. Different producing areas, the quality of Gastrodia elata must be different, directly affect the quality, price and even directly affect the efficacy. But the local production of "Gastrodia elata" does not have its own brand, and all claim that their own Gastrodia elata is the best, is a genuine medicine. These should be decided by science and put into the market to solve, how can the market distinguish between the good and the bad? There is no way, the market has given a relatively "fair" price to sell in the market, all sold at the same "price". Is this not the real genuine medicine Gastrodia elata "aggrieved"?

Third, there is no large-scale planting.

If individual production is planted blindly, it is difficult to guarantee the income of drug farmers. Under the condition of market economy, the cultivation of medicinal materials is scattered in thousands of households, and there is no fixed enterprise or organization to coordinate the production plan. Drug farmers can only judge whether and how much to plant by relying on the commodity prices shown by the market at a certain time, and seldom consider the changes in market demand when this product faces the market. In this way, there are often periodic fluctuations of excess or shortage of medicinal materials. When there is a large amount of overproduction, even valuable genuine medicines may become "cheap"; on the other hand, when they are underproduced, even "crows" will sell "Phoenix" prices. It is this abnormal fluctuation that makes it difficult for many valuable and authentic medicinal materials to maintain their due precious and "worth" in the market for a long time. And the interests of drug farmers are also difficult to protect, thus gradually forming a cycle in which the price of medicinal materials is out of proportion to the income of drug farmers.

IV. The problem of "public nuisance" is relatively common.

Due to lax selection of soil and long-term application of pesticides and inorganic fertilizers, some excessive use of pesticides in order to avoid diseases and insect pests, resulting in excessive heavy metal content and pesticide residues in authentic medicinal materials, which is one of the important reasons for the decline in the quality of authentic medicinal materials.