The World Cup in Russia 2018 is being in the heat of the battle. On June 23, a batch ofcrayfishes from Jingzhou, Hubei Province of China, was completed the customs clearanceat St. Petersburg. Russian exporters will send these crayfishes to restaurantsand bars of all competition cities via offline channels and fans from all overthe world will discover this Chinese “cyber popular” dish— crayfish.
The 100 thousand crayfishes exported to Russia this year are the “world cup version” which is co-built by China National Agricultural Development Group Co., Ltd Xiantianxia and Alibaba Rural Taobao. Inorder to ensure the quality, these crayfishes were strictly controlled from the sourcing. The “place of birth” of this batch of crayfishes is “crayfish - rice combination cultivation demonstration base” of Jingzhou Jiangxiangyuan Ecological Agriculture Co., Ltd. It is seen by reporter that, rice was planted at the paddy field while crayfishes were raised in water and trees were planted at the sides of ditches. The General Manager Jianzhong Tan of Jingzhou Jiangxiangyuan Ecological Agriculture Co., Ltd told reporter that, now the company was mainly promoting the mode of “crayfish - rice combination cultivation”, which can plant one-season oilseed rape, raise one-season crayfish, and plant one-season rice. In this way, the comprehensive benefit of the rice field will be doubled. “Crayfishes are raised at the rice field, so pesticidecan’t be used, while the rotten rice straws provide nutriments of food andoxygen to crayfishes”. Jianzhong Tan also told reporter that one-mu field can produce 200-jin qualified crayfishes with an average price of RMB 35 per jin.
In recentyears, Jingzhou has vigorously promoted the cultivation mode of “two green aquatic products”,namely planting green rice and raising green aquatic product, which requests that low toxic pesticides shall be used to prevent andcontrol rice pests or biological and physical measures shall be adopted. Inthis way, the average consumption of chemical pesticides will reduce 51.7% while the consumption of chemical fertilizer reduced 50%.
“For example, thePH value of the pond where this batch of crayfishes exported to Russia areraised is raised maintains around 7 while the oxygen content remains between 5to 10 mg per liter. The water temperature keep under 30 degree in summer”. The marketing expert Jiaoyang Wang of the GreatAgriculture Division of Ali Village Business Department introduced that, crayfishes which were raised under the circumstance of comfortable environment would beprocessed with standards, including being strictly picked up by people, clearedby ultrasonic, frozen by liquid nitrogen, and packaged.
ViceGeneral Manager Wangming Chen of Wuhan Han’ou International Logistics Co., Ltdsaid that, in order to ensure the quality of this batch of crayfishes after arrivedat Russia, containers were facilitated with electric temperature control systemin the whole journey, which could control the inner temperature of containers between 25 degree and under 25 degree. “Thesecrayfishes have been processed into mature products and thus, consumers can eatonly just heating them for five minutes”. General Manager Xin Cai of ChinaNational Agricultural Development Group Co., Ltd expressed that, differentiated with Chinese consumers’ preference to spicy flavor, European and American people prefer to cook crayfishes with cream and cheese. Thus, this batch ofcrayfishes has been cooked with different flavors including garlic, and ThirteenSpice.
It is introduced that, the “world cupversion” crayfishes willsupply for domestic consumers as well via Tmall, Hema Fresh, Darunfa and otheroffline channels. “The purchasing amount of the whole year is at least 300thousand jin. Moreover, Sumaitong, the cross-border B2C platform of Alibabawill join hands with Rural Taobao to supply Chinese crayfishes to Russian consumers via online channels.” Jiaoyang Wang said that, through the upgradingof quality controlling and supply chain, Rural Taobao plans to build the regional brand of crayfish, but also hope to boost Chinese agricultural product brands to go globally.
Jingzhou also plans to develop the ecological cultivation mode of 4 million mu of “twogreen aquatic products” in three years, including the crayfish-rice cultivation mode of 3.5 million mu, so as toprovide more qualified and ecological crayfishes to consumers both at home andabroad.