The Wealth Code behind the Color varieties

Purple potatoes, purple yams, black peanuts, colorful peanuts. Recently, Qi Jixiang, an old farmer from Mengyin County, Shandong Province, opened his eyes at the Chengdu Agricultural Expo and wanted to introduce back these good things he had never seen before, so as to drive his neighbors to develop color agriculture.

So, what is the origin of these new and strange varieties of color? What are the market prospects? The reporter walked into Chengdu, which is known as the "land of abundance" to explore the entrepreneurial story in order to unravel the code of wealth behind the colorful agriculture.

Story one

The post-85 graduate couple made a fortune with purple potatoes.

On the morning of November 21, at Jinrong Hui, a brand entrepreneurial activity in Chengdu, the 27-year-old Liu Yisheng stepped onto the podium and talked about the wealth fission that the purple potato project might bring in front of dozens of venture capital managers.

Because of the purple potato, Liu Yisheng not only stood on the stage of the finals of the Global Social Enterprise Entrepreneurship Competition (GS-VC) last year, but also gained love and married Peng Jie, who is both a classmate and a team member.

Liu Yisheng and Peng Jie are both graduate students from Sichuan Agricultural University, majoring in potato cultivation. In 2012, they used a small experimental base assigned by the school to try to grow purple potato "Black Beauty". After the harvest, Liu Yisheng and Peng Jie did not sell them in the market like other students, but took samples to customers to find orders. After many efforts, finally, with the price of 7-8 times the price of ordinary potatoes, won an order of 300 tons from a company in Shenzhen and dug up the first bucket of gold of purple potatoes.

After more than two years of development, the purple potato business of Liu Yisheng and Peng Jie has become bigger and bigger, and the commercial potato base has grown to more than 1000 mu. Technically, the company has successfully achieved annual production. Last year, the company made a profit of nearly 500000 yuan.

For future development, Liu Yisheng said that the company will further expand the market, let the market know more about purple potatoes, and create a "purple real" brand. In addition, we will carry out in-depth cooperation with Sichuan Agricultural University in food, cultivation, storage and transportation and other related specialties to further develop new products such as fruit and purple potatoes to make the products more in line with market demand.

Story two

The supply of colorful peanuts falls short of demand due to high technical requirements and difficult to expand on a large scale.

This year, the colorful peanut seeds bred by the Black Peanut Cooperative in Sanxi Ludao Town, Jintang County, Chengdu have become popular again, and they have already come to the door before the order is ordered.

Speaking of the bond with colorful peanuts, the head of the cooperative, Tang Minggang, told reporters that it originated from a "rare" look. In 2013, Lao Tang accidentally heard that someone had planted a kind of colored peanuts with different skin colors, so he was curious to find out. Then, driven by curiosity, with the help of Sichuan Academy of Agricultural Sciences, 10 kilograms of colored peanut seeds were introduced. Originally, I was just trying to have a try, but unexpectedly, once the colored peanuts were launched, the market response was very enthusiastic, and the high price of 50 yuan per kilogram fell short of demand.

However, although colored peanuts are good, the main business of cooperatives is still black peanuts, with a planting area of more than 5000 mu. Why do cooperative farmers not adjust their structure and plant more colored peanuts whose benefits are several times higher? "the requirement of planting technology is high, and the output is too low if it is not well managed." Lao Tang told us why.

It turns out that colored peanuts are introduced from Taiwan and the United States and belong to tropical peanuts, which are very different from our traditional peanut planting techniques. "the farmers still follow the old way, and the yield is very low, so they are not willing to take any more risks." Lao Tang told the reporter that at present, the cooperative has gradually explored a set of planting techniques for colored peanuts, with a yield of 300 kilograms per mu. The next step will gradually impart the technology to farmers in order to gradually expand the planting area of colored peanuts.

Wealth Code one

Only by scientific management and increasing output will farmers follow suit.

"compared with conventional varieties, the output of color varieties is often not satisfactory." Dr. he Wei, member of the Sichuan Variety examination and approval Committee and head of Sichuan potato research team during the 13th five-year Plan, told reporters that taking potatoes as an example, purple potatoes existed in ancient times and are not new things developed by modern people. Just because the purple potato has poor disease resistance and low yield, people gradually eliminate it, thus breeding yellow meat varieties with higher yield.

He Wei said that although most color varieties have been cross-improved to improve disease resistance, the yield is still not comparable to conventional varieties, and planting techniques are often more demanding. "Purple potatoes, for example, are 30% lower than conventional potatoes." He Wei said.

Liu Yisheng's team has a professional background and is familiar with all aspects of potato detoxification, original seed breeding, original seed breeding and commercial potato production. In theory, it has a great advantage in planting technical guidance, but at the beginning it suffers from farmers' mistrust, and it is difficult to carry out empty technology. So far, Liu Yisheng has been impressed by farmers' scorn at the promotion of "rice straw no-tillage" (that is, after placing seed potatoes in the rice field, covering the potato pieces with a layer of straw, then applying organic fertilizer, and covering the soil with plastic film). "but when it came time for harvest, when the fields were full of potatoes, the farmers were convinced and competed to learn the skills." Liu Yisheng said.

In order to reassure cooperative farmers and boldly follow suit, Liu Yisheng also agreed with farmers: if technical guidance is not in place, even if there is no harvest in the field, he will pay the agreed price to the farmers. As a result, some farmers who had a strong wait-and-see mood were willing to join in, and the area of the base expanded from 200mu to more than 1000 mu in a year.

Wealth Code II

Mainly play the health card and enter the market on the Internet.

"Color varieties often contain a lot of anthocyanins. Take colored peanuts as an example, they are the products of nature and the crystallization of labor after optimizing and screening a large number of peanut materials by researchers. They are not genetically modified products. Their taste and nutritional quality are better than those of ordinary peanuts, and the contents of some proteins, amino acids and trace elements are also much higher than those of ordinary peanuts, which is very much in line with the needs of modern people for healthy food." Researcher Zhang Xiangqiong, a peanut expert from the Institute of Economics, Sichuan Academy of Agricultural Sciences, said.

However, whether Lao Tang, who specializes in colored peanuts, or Xiao Liu, who mainly deals in purple potatoes, feels some helplessness in opening up the market. It turns out that because many consumers currently do not know about color varieties, listening to Internet rumors, they even suspect that color varieties are "genetically modified?" "is it dyed?" In the face of questions from customers, Liu Yisheng also went to a third-party monitoring agency in Shanghai and commissioned it to make a "non-GM identification report."

Through publicity and popularization, more and more consumers begin to understand, recognize and recognize purple potatoes. "moments play a big role in this." Liu Yisheng told reporters that the sales volume of their micro-store is so considerable that thousands of copies can be sold in one event, and many of them are repeat customers. This year, Liu Yisheng also poached e-commerce operators to further develop the retail market and shape the brand through the Internet.

Like Xiao Liu, Lao Tang is staring at the Internet. Lao Tang told reporters that the vast majority of the cooperative's sales of 5 million yuan last year came from the Internet. "the annual promotion fee for cooperatives in Alibaba and Baidu rankings is tens of thousands of yuan." Lao Tang said.