South China's Produce Makes its Way North

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Tuesday, August 27, 2002

South China's Produce Makes its Way North

More than 2.47 million tons of vegetables and fruit have been transported from the southern China island of Hainan to northern China this year.

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More than 2.47 million tons of vegetables and fruit have been transported from the southern China island of Hainan to northern China this year.

The amount of produce transported will increase with the onset of winter in the north, when fresh vegetables and fruit are in scarce supply.

With its warm climate and abundant rain, the island of Hainan is able to grow various tropical fruits and vegetables, such as mango, pineapple and banana, year-round. Additionally, the yield of vegetables and fruits from its 112,666 hectares of farmland is expected to increase by 10.3 percent this year.

The transport of produce was, for a time, hampered by poor transportation between the island and the mainland. Now a new network, combining highways and shipping, has been established to link the southern China island with provinces in the north.

In the first seven months of this year, 2.39 million tons of vegetables were transported across the Qiongzhou Straits by ship, then further distributed by highway. This represents a 4.16 percent increase year-on-year. The produce shipped directly to ports in the north has topped 86,900 tons, almost twice as much as that over the same period last year.

China's two shipping giants, China Ocean Shipping Corporation (COSCO) and China Shipping (Group) Company, established sea routes this year for the transport of produce from Haikou in Hainan to ports in northern China such as Tianjin, Dalian and Qinhuangdao.

In Hainan's major port Basuo, a cargo ship with at least 10,000tons of vegetables and fruit on board sails north every ten days.

Farmers on the island have now developed their own agencies and associations to transport and sell vegetables and fruit outside the island.

In Changpo, a small town in Qionghai City, Hainan, vegetables are sold to 17 cities nationwide, from Shenzhen in south China's Guangdong Province to Harbin in northeast China's Heilongjiang Province. The huge business is run by an association founded in 1994 by local farmers and haulers who had vehicles and initially sold their produce to nearby city Shenzhen.

"In the 1980s vegetables in my hometown were not profitable enough for farmers to grow due to poor transportation despite the great need in big cities," said Zhou Chuannan, head of the association.

The association now has more than 300 members with 150 trucks for long-distance transportation, 90 small trucks and 40 refrigerated vans.

The association sells more than 60,000 tons of vegetables and other farm products annually. A fleet of over 200 trucks have carried the vegetables and fruit out of the town every day since the beginning of this year.

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