In November 1970, a 30-year-old forest farm technician walked down the Xinfeng Railway Station in Jiangxi Province tiredly. He had been on the train for three days in a row, holding several saplings brought from Shaoyang, Hunan Province in his arms. Back at the forest farm, the technician secretly planted these saplings from other provinces behind his house. In the following year, the saplings gradually blossomed and fruited, and each sweet orange was born, and eventually grew into the best-selling navel orange brand in the world.
Twenty years later, Chu Shijian, then the director of the Yuxi Cigarette Factory, ate a local rock candy orange from Yunnan given by a friend at home. Chu Shijian, who was already interested in planting, found out that the origin of this rock sugar orange is also in Hunan, and this chat also laid the next life goal for him.
In this video, Dalang was invited by the Jiangxi Communist Youth League to select the most representative regional brands in the country, Gannan navel oranges and the originator of Internet new farmers, the only remaining personal brand, Yunnan Chucheng, let’s talk about this A fifty-year history of the rise of Double Orange.
1. “Gan-produced” American oranges conquer Hong Kong
At the beginning of the video, let’s time back to Xinfeng County, Jiangxi Province in November 1975.
Several salesmen from the foreign trade company were inspecting the local state-owned farm and looking at the various vegetables and fruits displayed on the farm. Someone peeled off a “citrus” and tasted it. The well-informed salesman asked in surprise: How can I get an American orange? The farm technician on the side quickly explained to them: this is actually the citrus grown on the farm. After a few people present tasted it, they were even more unconvinced. This is obviously the authentic “Washington navel orange”, how can it appear in Jiangxi.
In spite of a hundred mouths, the technician had to pull everyone into the orchard like a short video blogger with goods, and picked them from the fruit trees. Shipped to Hong Kong, the price is 18 Hong Kong dollars a pound, which is the precious foreign exchange on the whole point. The technician’s name is Yuan Shougen, the legendary first person in Gannan navel oranges.
Soon after, an urgent telegram from the Hong Kong distributor was sent to the Ministry of Foreign Trade: the fruit is similar to American oranges, and the price is higher than that of American oranges. Please organize the supply quickly. Converted to the current words, it is your citrus, the Hermes among oranges.
2. The first person to grow oranges
How Ganzhou planted American navel oranges began five years ago. In November 1970, 30-year-old Master Yuan went to Shaoyang, Hunan Province to purchase orange seedlings, and accidentally found a “Washington” navel orange imported from the United States many years ago. Hunan Lao Biao told him that although the cultivation of South Orange, North Citrus and Washington navel oranges is good abroad, the yield in Hunan is very low and the taste is not good.
Yuan Shougen thought that navel oranges are also a kind of citrus, and the price is much higher than that of mandarin oranges grown for a long time in Ganzhou. Moreover, the climate and soil quality of Xinfeng is different from that of Hunan, so I have the mentality of giving it a try. Yuan Shougen bought 3 bundles of American saplings. It’s just that I was going to buy mandarin orange seedlings, but I bought a few bundles of navel orange seedlings. If the farm leader asks, how should he explain it. Fortunately, these two seedlings look alike, so Master Yuan and the leader reported that they would buy some other “citrus” for a comparative experiment.
Not to mention that this place in southern Gansu is a treasure land of 200 navel orange seedlings, 156 of which survived and finally harvested 400 catties. Seeing that the raw rice was cooked, the news of the American navel oranges being grown on the farm spread all over Ganzhou, and the leaders had no choice but to count, and the scene at the beginning of the video appeared.
In the second year of the Canton Fair, one ton of Gannan navel oranges was sent to Hong Kong for sale. After receiving approval from the other side of the Hong Kong River, led by the Ministry of Foreign Trade and the Planning Commission, Xinfeng’s orange orchard soon expanded to 20,000 mu. One must know that the navel orange test field that Master Yuan secretly built was only five mu a year before it was exported to Hong Kong. As an old revolutionary base, Yuan Shougen, a descendant of the cradle of rebellion, immediately returned to the leadership with three words: it can’t be done.
Gannan navel orange
3. The navel orange “assassin” strikes
It turns out that blindly engaging in large-scale planting of the Great Leap Forward is completely immature in terms of market capacity and technical reserves. Yuan Shougen told the leaders realistically: I can borrow money, but the navel orange planting technology cannot be learned. .
So in May 1979, Yuan Shougen and several scholars from the domestic citrus planting industry formed a delegation to go to the United States to investigate agricultural planting. Yuan Shougen recalled that when he inspected the main producing areas of California navel oranges in the United States, he found that the modernization of American agriculture has been very amazing. Agricultural machinery is used extensively in planting. And the degree of refinement is very high. For example, by detecting a leaf, you can know the soil condition of a tree, and then adjust the fertilizer and sunlight immediately.
But you must know that the United States realized it forty years ago.
As we all know, oranges are originally a hybrid of oranges and grapefruits, so grafting technology is very important for large-scale promotion. Yuan Shougen found that when American workers grafted navel orange seedlings, they used a very small pair of scissors, which was extremely efficient. In China, Master Yuan’s first thing is to find an agricultural technician, take out this treasure, and see if he can reverse engineer it at once.
As a result, the technician told him that the structure was easy to imitate, but the scissors used a special steel, which could not be mass-produced in China at that time. At this time, the state planned to establish foreign trade planting bases in three counties of Ganzhou. The arrow is on the string and has to be sent.
After returning to China, Yuan Shougen introduced 8 new varieties of navel oranges from abroad through Huazhong Agricultural University. In the following years, Gannan navel oranges have been sold as a foreign trade product by relying on cheap labor and planting techniques adapted to local conditions. There are seven impoverished counties under the Jiulian Mountains overseas, and they have been removed for planting navel oranges.
At the same time, in June 2000, the first batch of Sunkist navel oranges entered the Chinese market. According to statistics, only in the late 1990s when export was prohibited, the number of Sunkist navel oranges flowing into the Chinese market through various channels exceeded 60,000 tons per year, while the annual output of Gannan navel oranges was only 48,000 tons.
Sunkist is a large cooperative of American citrus growers founded in 1893. Not only in the United States but also one of the largest fruit and vegetable cooperatives in the world. Sunkist’s navel oranges don’t look like they’ve grown from the ground, but from molds. They adopted a standardized production, centralized procurement model, and commercialized to the teeth. The peel is used as feed, and the small oranges are squeezed into juice and sold in 100 countries around the world.
Facing the impact of this high-end and high-quality navel orange “assassin”, Yuan Shougen, who was about to retire in 2001, said with emotion that the Gannan navel oranges he introduced and planted by himself still have American blood. In the future, the oranges must develop and cultivate their own. Navel orange varieties and leading enterprises.
4. Borrowing money to grow oranges, Chu orange was born
Let’s move the camera to Yuxi County (now Hongta District) in the south of Caiyun.
Just the second year after American navel oranges entered the Chinese market, a guest came to Chu Shijian’s house, who was 74 years old. The person who came here was my younger brother who didn’t usually come and go, and the gift he brought was a bag of oranges grown at home. At that time, Chu Shijian was already suffering from severe diabetes, but he still ate an orange with kindness.
The sweet taste of oranges quickly aroused Chu Shijian’s interest. The younger brother told him that this is a rock candy orange from Yunnan, which has been grown locally for many years, but the output has been limited. Because everyone is growing flowers, vegetables, coffee and tea. Chu Shijian, the former chairman of Yunnan Hongta Group, has many years of experience in tobacco planting and he is keenly aware that growing oranges should be a business opportunity.
After investigating several areas, Ailao Mountain in Yuxi, Yunnan was finally selected as the planting base. Before Chu Shijian retired, he was engaged in the franchise business of hundreds of billions of dollars. He started the orange business. He still took out the rigorousness and seriousness of his youth and did market research first. For example, in the first few years, Chu Shijian began to buy oranges to try.
The main comparison is the American Sunkist orange that has entered Chinese supermarkets. Chu Shijian found that the main advantage of the United States is that it sells well, and the size of the fruit body is standard, and it is easy to store, but the taste is still a bit sour compared to the Chinese. If Yunnan Bingtang oranges are planted with the same appearance, they can still maintain a certain taste, and the price of Yuxi oranges is a bit cheaper.
But the farmers of the farm were obviously unable to adapt to this new way of planting. The salary of 300 yuan a month and the strict work regulations made several farmers leave overnight. How to retain people? After being the factory manager for decades, Chu Shijian sat in the fields and chatted with farmers. He often invited the foreman to eat at home. Finally, he was retained. More importantly, Mr. Chu also packaged the orange trees to others, and distributed bonuses according to the final orange yield and quality.
After three years of orange trees bearing fruit, many farmers who had run away before came back on their own initiative. This is in line with his management philosophy in the tobacco factory. Work performance must be linked to personal income, “otherwise it’s useless if you lead a tiger.”
Just when Chu Shijian was busy in the fields, Gannan navel oranges in 2004 were undergoing an unprecedented change. In order to complete the foreign trade target, farmers in southern Gansu began to transfer seedlings from all over the country in the late 1990s, which is equivalent to the indirect introduction of “Huanglongbing”. A few years later, the former navel orange base has become a “citrus pest and disease expo”, and the output has also dropped sharply. . Watching the navel orange base once built with one hand fall into a slump.
Yuan Shougen chose to re-emerge in the arena. It took only two years for Yuan Shougen to set up professional cooperatives for navel oranges all over Ganzhou to solve the urgent standardization problem and protect the brand value from shrinking. Yuan Shougen also worked with the local agricultural department to formulate the country’s first “Gannan navel orange” standard. The brand, cultivation and sales of Gannan navel oranges have been unified for the first time.
Just as Gannan navel oranges and Yuxi’s Chu oranges have both solved the problem of growing oranges, another urgent need is placed in front of them. How to sell oranges?
In 2008, the Sunkist brand established its 100th anniversary. An advertisement called Sunkist Smile was broadcast on major TV stations. In the advertisement, the Sunkist oranges were not only full, but also showed a smile after a bite. At the same time, Sunkist was also collecting various smiles around the world. expression. This kind of marketing method that links the brand and consumers’ emotions quickly improved the brand recognition of American oranges.
Foreign companies not only grow oranges, but also do marketing. In contrast, Gancheng relied on foreign trade in the early days, while Chu Orange relied on acquaintances who opened the company to purchase and distribute them to employees. After the expansion of China Orange, can there be any new marketing ideas?
In 2012, a newly established e-commerce platform in Beijing (Original Life) found Chu Shijian. This website, operated by a former media person, quickly came up with a creative marketing plan: storytelling + cultural packaging + socialization Media marketing + production and sales one-stop service. The highest level of selling goods is to sell feelings and stories. When you see the copywriting on the package, “Start a business at the age of 75, and cultivate beautiful oranges for ten years”, no one will be moved.
Chu Orange’s success has not only caught up with e-commerce dividends, but more importantly, it has also caught up with the development of Weibo. In the following time, Chu Shijian’s friends, including Wang Shi, Liu Chuanzhi and other celebrities, commented and reposted tirelessly, which had a geometrically amplified influence on Chu Orange’s sales.
Finally, let’s summarize the circulation mode of Sunkist, Chu orange and Gannan navel oranges. Sunkist in the United States uniformly purchases standardized navel oranges from cooperative farms, and then sells them to branches through the head office, and then through large supermarkets and distribution outlets. Sales. The production end of Chu orange is similar to that of Sunkist. It is concentrated by large farms, but in terms of distribution, it skips the links of large supermarkets and dealers. The direct sales model is adopted, mainly through direct sales online stores and group purchase channels.
The last is Gannan navel orange. As one of the three major navel orange producing areas in the world, the situation is relatively more complicated. On the production side, currently Gannan navel oranges are not only grown by large farms, but also by small and medium-sized farmers. In terms of distribution channels, there are not only wholesalers, distributors, but even farmers who sell directly through e-commerce. supernatural powers.
last words
To sum up, Gannan has gained market premium through intensive cultivation and scale effect, from the small farmer model to the establishment of regional brands. Chu Orange relies more on a personal IP to revitalize existing resources and attract capital, which is basically impossible to replicate from the financing model. The family disputes after the death of the old man cast an uncertain shadow on the Chu Orange brand.
On Tmall Taobao and supermarket shelves, and in fruit shops on the street, standardized foreign oranges and individual Chinese oranges are waiting for consumers to vote with their feet. Lovers see only the good, and haters see the evil . To know the taste of oranges, you must taste them yourself.
The reason for making this video is that I accidentally ate an orange brought by a Jiujiang Langyou from his own mountain, which made me feel the freshness and sweetness that I haven’t seen for a long time. Especially when Musk was clamoring to fly out of the earth on the Internet, Zuckerberg plunged into the metaverse that was suspended from the real world, as if there were only pre-made dishes, PPT, and mobile games left. I appreciate those who wonder how to do it every day New farmers who grow better oranges and improve the quality of crops.
After all, it is the very few rich people who can board the spaceship. Agriculture, that is the most common people, and the last, Noah’s Ark.
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