1994: Vegetable farmers strike back

Chapter 340 Establishment
As the square-headed Jetta passed by hotels in the city, Li Cai turned to Chen Jiazhi, who was enjoying the natural breeze, and asked, "Brother Chen, how about I book you a hotel? You'll sleep more comfortably tonight."

“No need, I’ll stay in the dormitory.” Chen Jiazhi snapped out of his thoughts. “The accommodations in the past two years were much worse than this.”

Xue Jun was also in the car, and he had also drunk quite a bit. He took out a cigarette and lit it for the two of them.

Thinking that Li Cai had just returned from Qingyuan this afternoon, Chen Jiazhi said, "I'm going out again in a couple of days. It's rare that everyone is here today, so let's have a good chat tonight."

Xue Jun laughed and said, "Let's buy some more wine and snacks, and have a drink later. Neither Cai nor Xu drank any wine today, and Jia Zhi shouldn't be drunk either. Your acting is pretty good."

"I'm drunk. You can see how much I drank," Chen Jiazhi said. "But I can have plain water later, you guys can drink."

"Hey~" Xue Jun teased, "You drink a lot with outsiders, but not with your own people."

“You already said we’re on the same side.” Chen Jiazhi wasn’t going to be provoked.

Li Cai laughed and said, "Brother Chen has activated his boss privilege; magical attacks are ineffective."

"..." Unable to win the argument, Xue Jun told Li Cai to find a suitable parking spot while he went to buy a car.

Li Cai said, "Alright, General, you just rest quietly. I'll go buy it when it's ready."

After a pause, Li Cai added, "Brother Chen, Xiao Xiong and the others are in the dorm too, let's invite them over?"

"Okay, call them all."

The reliable fresh food distribution center currently has sufficient staff, including sorting, purchasing, and delivery personnel. Even in the evening, about ten people came for a late-night snack.

Just as the dishes were ready, Chen Zhengxu returned from dropping off the guests.

"Mr. Xu, would you like beer or baijiu?"

"Beer, please." Chen Zhengxu took the beer and then added, "Those of you who have work to do in the early morning, please take it easy and don't let it interfere with your business."

"Don't worry, we brothers all know what we're doing."

Someone joked, "Is Mr. Chen planning to drink plain boiled water?"

Chen Jiazhi took the ceramic cup given to him by his third sister, Chen Jiaying, raised it with a smile, and said, "Come on, everyone has worked hard. I'll drink this cup with water instead of wine."

"Xu~"

"General, would you like Sister Ying to pour you a glass of cool boiled water too?"

Xue Jun scoffed, "I'm not as cowardly as some people, I can easily drink two or three more bottles of beer."

Despite the teasing, everyone got up and had a drink with Chen Jiazhi.

Actually, there's no custom of toasting in their rural area, and drinking is quite casual, which Chen Jiazhi is used to.

However, he found that these people were quite restrained when drinking, but they were very enthusiastic when chatting, and they were also energetic when talking about work, and they were not afraid of potential competition.

In procurement and delivery, everyone is willing to talk about their interactions with customers, and the others help to fill in any gaps.

Procurement and acceptance, packaging and transportation, preservation, vehicle arrangement and route planning, regular customer follow-ups...

Chen Jiazhi can occasionally offer some advice, but the most important thing is that the current team atmosphere is very good.

Besides the deliveryman, Ding Qiao, who sells vegetables at the stall, was also there, sitting with Li Cai.

Chen Jiazhi moved to sit next to the two men and started talking about the work at the stall.

Although vegetable prices have been sluggish recently, the daily output of the vegetable market has remained at around 30, and apart from the vegetables supplied to Hong Kong, the amount supplied to the stalls is not large.

That's why Li went out to find sources of goods, or more accurately, to establish a source of goods base.

Li Cai took a sip of Zhujiang beer and said, "This time, I went to Lianzhou with General Manager Huang and Huang Chuan. We had discussions in a place called Xi'an Town and a village."

With Mr. Huang's endorsement, some farmers are willing to cooperate with us, grow vegetables according to our requirements, and have them purchased by us.

Many people will only bring others in after they see the benefits.

Moreover, the roads there are mostly dirt roads now, and the roads between Sanlian and Yiyang are very difficult to travel. If you leave Qingyuan in the morning, you won't arrive in Lianzhou until evening. Transporting vegetables there will be quite challenging.

Chen Jiazhi took a sip of water and pondered for a moment before saying, "The Qinglian Class I Highway started construction last year."

Li Cai said, "But it will take at least two or three years for the entire line to be open to traffic. Building this road is not easy."

"Sanlian Yiyang" refers to Lianshan, Liannan, Lianzhou and Yangshan, which are under the jurisdiction of Qingyuan and are all located in the mountainous area of ​​northern Guangdong.

It is also a major production area for off-season vegetables in Guangdong.

Geographically speaking, Yangshan is further south, making transportation more convenient, and it also has many vegetable bases.

However, Chen Jiazhi had no connections in the area.

Lianzhou is different. Huang Jianyuan and his nephew Huang Chuan are from Lianzhou, so they can establish direct contact.

Lianzhou is a mountainous county that mainly relies on agriculture, but its arable land is relatively contiguous, flat, and far from industrial pollution, making it extremely suitable for developing vegetable production.

It's just too remote and inconvenient to get to.

This has resulted in Lianzhou cabbage not yet being fully available in the market.

Li Cai returned to his dormitory and took out his notebook. "This time I went to many places and met many people. The most commonly grown vegetable in the area is spring radish, followed by eggplant, summer cabbage, snow peas, tomatoes, and more than ten other kinds of vegetables such as mustard greens."

As a result, contiguous snow pea production bases have formed in Xishang Town, which are very popular in the market.

Chen Jiazhi was surprised to find that snow peas were grown in Xishang Town; it was quite a coincidence.

Are snow peas produced out of season?

“Yes.” Li Cai nodded. “It was put on the market at the beginning of the month and is one of the more expensive vegetables recently.”

Snow peas thrive in cool climates, and in areas like Huacheng, where summer temperatures are too high to grow them, they can be harvested in Lianzhou one or two months earlier.

Li Cai added, "I originally planned to buy a truckload of goods on the way back, but local buyers had already agreed to buy them, mainly to sell to Shenzhen. It was too late to buy from individual sellers at that time."

Chen Jiazhi laughed and said, "It's alright. Right now, let's focus on getting the supply base in order. You can handle the rest."

"Hmm." Li Cai sipped his beer and said, "I plan to get goods from those major distributors to replenish my supply."

This involves the issue of positioning.

Stall number 63 is positioned to sell leafy vegetables, but insufficient transaction volume is a real problem. Chen Jiazhi plans to hand over this part to Li Cai.

Chen Jiazhi then inquired about the situation in Foshan, where Li Cai had previously sourced leafy vegetables.

“Foshan has also recently had a pesticide residue incident. The local use of pesticides such as methamidophos, dichlorvos and dimethoate is also quite serious, which is inconsistent with its positioning.”

"No wonder you went to Lianzhou." Chen Jiazhi raised his glass in appreciation: "Strive to make Lianzhou a good source of goods. Once the Qinglian Highway is completed, there will be great potential."

Currently, Lianzhou cabbage can be transported out, but to achieve outstanding quality, there are still requirements regarding varieties, planting techniques, and so on.

These past two years have been a period of exploration.

Meanwhile, the opening of cold storage facilities and new stalls in the market has been temporarily suspended. Upon closer examination, it seems a bit premature to act now.

"Let's talk about work, let's drink, let's drink." Xue Jun walked over with a wine glass in his hand.

“Okay, drink up.” Chen Jiazhi also picked up a glass of plain water, not intimidated at all.

"Next time, if you want plain water, I'll get you a separate table," Xue Jun said. "You can't use the boss's privileges forever."

"Since they have special privileges, they can certainly activate them at any time."

After finishing his late-night snack, all the annoyance he felt towards Ding Jianhui disappeared.

There were plenty of dormitory rooms at the distribution center, and Chen Jiazhi was able to rest quite comfortably.

When I got up, the sorting center downstairs was still busy. I went to check on the stalls, grabbed the keys, and called Xue Jun to go to the city to find a fruit wholesale market. At that time, Jiangnan mainly focused on vegetable wholesale; fruit was scarce.

Other major fruit wholesale markets include Nanyuan and Nanbei Fruit Wholesale Markets.

But after searching around, I couldn't find any durians for sale, and there were relatively few imported fruits, so I had to leave empty-handed.

Li Cai asked, "Brother Chen, are you thinking of starting a fruit business?"

Chen Jiazhi shook his head and told them about the durians brought by the Malaysian customer.

"Actually, I could do a fruit business, but I don't have that much energy right now. I'll think about it later."

He has too much money right now and wants to spend it, but he can't just spend it recklessly, since it's unrealistic to expect to replicate the experiences of the past year or so.

After buying a plane ticket in advance at the airport, Chen Jiazhi drove back to the market and stayed at home for two days before boarding the plane to Shanghai again.

Xue Jun and Ao Dehai were the two who went with them.

There's not a need for so many people in the early stages. Chen Jiazhi is currently unaware of the procedures for acquiring land in Shanghai, so he can only take it one step at a time.

On the plane, Chen Jiazhi was looking at the latest issue of "Seed World" magazine when a trade fair caught his attention.

"In October, the Beijing Fengtai Seed Trade Fair will be held at the Xinfadi Agricultural Wholesale Market."

“It has been held since 1992.”

“We can let Hongzhong go and take another look. Forget it, I'll go by myself this time.”

Xinfadi is also the largest vegetable wholesale market in Beijing, with a transaction volume ranking among the top in the country.

Besides looking at seeds, you can also visit the vegetable wholesale market and make friends with wholesalers; you might need their help later.

Upon arriving in Shanghai, the three quickly got to work.

Ao Dehai asked, "Boss, how many acres of land do you plan to acquire in Shanghai to build a vegetable market?"

Chen Jiazhi thought for a moment and said, "It depends. More than 200 mu or less than 500 mu is fine."

Ao Dehai scratched his head and asked, "How should we proceed now?"

Chen Jiazhi pondered for a moment, closed the notebook he had just finished writing in, and said, "Buy a few cartons of good cigarettes and go to the village committee to inquire about it first."

In his previous life, he would go directly to the village committee to rent land, and now he can only try this method for the time being.

However, after giving away a few packs of cigarettes, it didn't have much of an effect.

Nowadays, there are quite a few out-of-town vegetable farmers renting land in Shanghai to grow vegetables; however, the areas they cultivate are not very large.

People like Chen Jiazhi, who talk about owning hundreds of acres, are as rare as giant pandas.

I asked two village committees, and the village officials gave the same response: "If you want to rent land, then you should ask the villagers to rent the land to you yourself. Why are you coming to me?"

I wandered around Yangxing Town in Baoshan District several times, but made no progress. Instead, I saw quite a few vegetable plots.

There are many kinds of vegetables, but the most famous vegetable in Yangxing Town is cucumber.

In recent years, the Baoyang cucumber, which was cultivated from the local cucumber varieties in Yangxing Town, has been rapidly promoted in the suburbs of the city and the surrounding areas of Shanghai due to its high quality and high yield. It is gradually becoming the dominant cucumber variety in Shanghai.

However, Baoyang cucumbers are more suitable for greenhouse cultivation, and they are rarely seen at present.

The three of them rented bicycles and traveled further and further afield.

Ao Dehai shouted, "Boss, look! Greenhouses! So many greenhouses!"

"Indeed, this greenhouse looks unusual."

Chen Jiazhi also noticed the large shed ahead, which looked very new, so he sped up and rode forward.

"It looks like they're growing leafy greens, but they don't look very good."

The Shanghai bok choy grown in the greenhouse is growing only so-so, sparsely, but the basic conditions are quite good.

Chen Jiazhi also saw the sign not far away: Luonan Vegetable Horticulture Farm.

Ronan is also a town.

Chen Jiazhi estimated that this was a collectively built vegetable market, with greenhouses, cement ditches, drip irrigation and sprinkler irrigation facilities, making it a rare standardized horticultural farm at that time.

The three men's pointing and whispering quickly attracted the attention of the villagers, and some villagers came forward to ask them questions. Chen Jiazhi explained his purpose.

Soon, village officials arrived and asked, "Are you the ones who want to rent land to grow vegetables?"

Chen Jiazhi took out a cigarette and said, "Yes, I wanted to ask if there's any land left to rent in the village?"

The village official said, "We still have quite a bit of land in Fanrong Village. How much area do you want to rent?"

Chen Jiazhi held up two fingers.

"20 acres?"

"At least 200 mu."

"Sigh~"

Chen Jiazhi had seen the same expression many times in recent days and thought he was going to be rejected again.

However, after waiting for a while, the middle-aged village official said, "There have never been so many private rentals before."

Chen Jiazhi pointed to the greenhouse in front of him, "This area is quite large, isn't it?"

“This was built collectively,” the village official said. “It’s only 100 mu in total, and it’s all covered with greenhouses. It cost 400 million yuan just for that. If you were to rent 200 mu of land, would you also be building greenhouses there?”

A pipe shed is also known as a greenhouse.

Chen Jiazhi shook his head and said, "The cost of building a greenhouse is too high, we can't afford it. We mainly rent it to grow open-field vegetables."

"Oh~" The village official said, smoking a cigarette and looking up, "This is indeed not cheap, but it's worth it. It's convenient to manage this greenhouse vegetable planting."

Looking at the vegetables in the greenhouse, Chen Jiazhi suppressed the urge to complain and asked, "Does Luonan Horticulture Farm receive subsidies from higher authorities?"

"Ah."

The village official nodded, and Chen Jiazhi gave him a pack of cigarettes and continued to inquire.

I haven't been able to find out the exact figures, but I know that the city is providing significant support for newly built vegetable markets.

However, this is a collective effort.

"I don't know if there are subsidies for privately built sites; I don't think there are any in Ronan."

Chen Jiazhi was quite satisfied with the result. It was rare to encounter a village cadre who was willing to communicate, so he continued to inquire about the land rental situation.

Two hundred acres of land is no small amount; to gather that much land, the village needs to help organize it.

In reality, Chen Jiazhi wanted more than just 200 acres.

This has put the village officials in a difficult position.

However, this person showed good initiative and promised to go back and discuss it. After making a decision, he would convene a meeting of the villagers in the village and also report to the town leaders.

Large-scale land leasing is not easy.

Fortunately, the collective horticulture farm in Fanrong Village has just been built, so the experience is still fresh, and the villagers and village officials are quite receptive to it.

Chen Jiazhi, along with Ao Dehai and Xue Jun, waited for two more days before receiving news that the town's vegetable department wanted to see him.

(End of this chapter)