Apples
PaPaPeng
My replies (in another NG) to the original question may be of interest
to this group.
=============
On Mon, 01 Oct 2007 05:34:17 -0700, "charleym...@gmail.com"
<charleym...@gmail.com> wrote:
Having spent decades working to improve the safety of our domestic
produce by creating standards for farmers in America, we have now
thrown out all those advancements by importing our food supply.
Pesticides are proven to impact the neurological system, and this is a
great threat to children who's systems are still undeveloped. With the
increase in disorders such as autism, and new studies linking
pesticides to increased susceptibility to autism, we need to examine
the possibility that we are poisoning our children. One example is the
Chinese apple industry, which did not exist 15 years ago, and now
dominates the world producers. Children consume the majority of apple
juice world wide, and we should wonder how the Chinese managed to
build this industry so quickly. Check out www.chineseapplejuice.com
On Mon, 01 Oct 2007 05:34:17 -0700, "charleym...@gmail.com"
<charleym...@gmail.com> wrote:
>One example is the
>Chinese apple industry, which did not exist 15 years ago, and now
>dominates the world producers. Children consume the majority of apple
>juice world wide, and we should wonder how the Chinese managed to
>build this industry so quickly. Check out www.chineseapplejuice.com
Saw a TV report somewhere. I think it was PBS on "China Rising".
The part that really bamboozled me was that prime apples from China
had their fruit buds protected individually in a paper bag (complete
with printed logo) by workers attaching these bags by hand. The
apples then grow to maturity protected from insect attacks and from
insecticide sprays. And probably the vagaries of weather. Ingenuous.
Two major problems perhaps four solved in one stroke. The fourth
problem solved is when harvested the apples are aleady wrapped for the
market. Maybe fifth, sixth, seventh and eight advantages too as the
apples will be protected from human skin contact at harvest and do not
require washing or post plucking quality control as the plucker can do
the QA at the time he plucks the apple. This virtuous circle includes
minimal loss from placing unsuitable apples on the shelves. Sub
quality apples go to make apple juice without having to be sorted
again at the factory.
China can do this because of the availability of plentiful cheap
labor. The same laborers who so carefully placed the paper bags over
the buds can also inspect them for ripeness when they harvest the
apples. The best ones are plucked and the rawer ones left on the tree
to ripen to full juice and texture. So you have consistent best
quality in every batch and minimal loss from overripe fruits or bad
customer satisfaction from unripe ones. Even without the paper
wrapper for the buds part here is no machine harvestor that can beat
this kind of fruit orchard husbandry.
I probably embellished the advantages of the Chinese innovations from
point thee onwards (ie not in the TV report) but I defy you to fault
my arguments.
I am guessing here but I imagine, or maybe it was in that TV report,
the another advantage China has is that you can grow apple trees on
slopes quite useless for grain farming or anything else. The vast
scarred loess hills of north central China would be ideal for fruit
orchards. I think there are indications that these same lands are
also ideal for grape growing and the wine and liquor inductries of the
other countries are at risk. Like apples grapes will benefit greatly
from human husbandry and no machine can compete with that kind of
care.
There you are. There is no way the apple orchards of America can get
enough Mexican migrant workers or pay them enough to do this kind of
work. So their apples were left to rot on the trees. A few years of
that and it was necessary to uproot those trees. I can't remember if
rotting apples would harbor and promote any agricultural diseases.
On Mon, 01 Oct 2007 17:16:52 GMT, PaPaPeng <PaPa...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>China can do this because of the availability of plentiful cheap
>labor. The same laborers who so carefully placed the paper bags over
>the buds can also inspect them for ripeness when they harvest the
>apples.
I can't remember if they also hand pollinate the buds, an altogether
not impossible labor intensive procedure that guarantees quality.
This can be easily done and the laborer can immediately cover that
pollinated bud with the paper bag. This way there will not be any
competitive pollination by wild pollen, a surefire way of assuring
genetic purity. It also ensures that practically every flower will
produce a fruit. The paper bag keeps out insect infestations while it
is growing. This intensive care will also let workers spot at an early
stage any infestations or botanical distress that can be treated
promptly. Early treatment requires less aggressive intervention .
That in turn will minimize control efforts, minimize costs and is
ecologically friendlier.
As I said it before boggles my mind that anyone could come up with
such a scheme to operate an orchard industry. I think the original
scheme was to make work in an otherwise poor countryside. When one
does virtuous things the benefits just multiply. I think the poor
third world countries should practice something similar, make use of
idle labor and literally work like busy bees to enhance their fruit
and squash production for example.
charleym...@gmail.com
> My replies (in another NG) to the original question may be of interest
> to this group.
> =============
>
>
> <charleymccorm...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Having spent decades working to improve the safety of our domestic
> produce by creating standards for farmers in America, we have now
> thrown out all those advancements by importing our food supply.
> Pesticides are proven to impact the neurological system, and this is a
> great threat to children who's systems are still undeveloped. With the
> increase in disorders such as autism, and new studies linking
> pesticides to increased susceptibility to autism, we need to examine
> the possibility that we are poisoning our children. One example is the
> Chinese apple industry, which did not exist 15 years ago, and now
> dominates the world producers. Children consume the majority of apple
> juice world wide, and we should wonder how the Chinese managed to
> build this industry so quickly. Check outwww.chineseapplejuice.com
>
> >China can do this because of the availability of plentiful cheap
> >labor. The same laborers who so carefully placed the paper bags over
> >the buds can also inspect them for ripeness when they harvest the
> >apples.
>
> I can't remember if they also hand pollinate the buds, an altogether
> not impossible labor intensive procedure that guarantees quality.
> This can be easily done and the laborer can immediately cover that
> pollinated bud with the paper bag. This way there will not be any
> competitive pollination by wild pollen, a surefire way of assuring
> genetic purity. It also ensures that practically every flower will
> produce a fruit. The paper bag keeps out insect infestations while it
> is growing. This intensive care will also let workers spot at an early
> stage any infestations or botanical distress that can be treated
> promptly. Early treatment requires less aggressive intervention .
> That in turn will minimize control efforts, minimize costs and is
> ecologically friendlier.
>
> As I said it before boggles my mind that anyone could come up with
> such a scheme to operate an orchard industry. I think the original
> scheme was to make work in an otherwise poor countryside. When one
> does virtuous things the benefits just multiply. I think the poor
> third world countries should practice something similar, make use of
> idle labor and literally work like busy bees to enhance their fruit
> and squash production for example.
Bagging has been used in America and Japan for sometime. I really
think the bagging of fruit witnessed in the documentary might have
been one of the organic farms that cater to China's elite and
political leaders. With literally millions of individual farmers in
China growing apples, most of them small farmers, I find it hard to
believe that they have access to an "idle" work force to grow apples
in such a manner.
PaPaPeng
>Bagging has been used in America and Japan for sometime. I really
>think the bagging of fruit witnessed in the documentary might have
>been one of the organic farms that cater to China's elite and
>political leaders. With literally millions of individual farmers in
>China growing apples, most of them small farmers, I find it hard to
>believe that they have access to an "idle" work force to grow apples
>in such a manner.
You are so out of touch with what is going on in China that the only
cure is for you to pay a visit there. You are free to travel anywhere
within China (Tibet requires an easily obtainable permit) and no one
gives a damn that you are there. That is you can see and ask anyone
anything you like. The cost of everything there is at almost giveaway
prices that a 1000 dollar budget will make you spend like a
millionaire.
Unemployment and underemployment is an endemic problem. Even a
university graduate is lucky to get a job as a security guard at 800
Yuan a month, the equivalent of just over USD 100. A mid management
job pays just around 300 to 500 dollars a month. In the countryside
the income is much less. That is why the peasants are streaming into
the cities by the tens of millions to find work. This option is not
available to most of the older peasants as they have to maintain their
farms and families. These stay at homes number in the hundreds of
millions since some 80 percent of China's 1.3 billions still live in
the countryside.
On this apple thingy, do give your theory on how China managed to grow
from nothing to its domination in so short a time. That's the OP's
question I tried to answer. He and I am certainly very interested in
another explanation.
charleym...@gmail.com
> On Tue, 02 Oct 2007 12:56:50 -0000, "charleymccorm...@gmail.com"
> from nothing to its domination in so short a time. That's the OP's
> question I tried to answer. He and I am certainly very interested in
> another explanation.
Sorry to evoke so much hostility that I am now in need of a "cure". I
believe I stated my theory that China is known for it's abusive use of
pesticides; that there are millions of farmers growing apples and no
way to monitor their pesticide use; that farmers are afraid of buying
"fake" pesticide and often use too much in order to compensate. The
fact that China is developing newer methods to detect pesticides on
apples proves the point that they are in use....Your theory about the
bags being used in mass production is beyond ridiculous. I must assume
you are a government official because only someone in that position
would offer such a lame explanation and expect people to believe it.
www.chineseapplejuice.com
charleym...@gmail.com
> from nothing to its domination in so short a time. That's the OP's
> question I tried to answer. He and I am certainly very interested in
> another explanation.
I'm sorry you feel the need to be insulting....I will pass on the
opportunity to go to China for a "cure"....or is it still called re-
education? The theory that the bagging method of fruit is being used
on a mass commercial level like this is clearly absurd. I also feel
sorry that you keep insisting that China's rapid growth in this
industry is built on the backs of poor peasants, but that is only part
of the problem. The abuse of pesticides in this country is well
documented. With over three million farmers growing apples, I think
they will be hard pressed to bring them all up to speed on the
responsible use of pesticides, and to monitor that activity.
www.chineseapplejuice.com
PaPaPeng
>China is known for it's abusive use of
>pesticides; that there are millions of farmers growing apples and no
>way to monitor their pesticide use; that farmers are afraid of buying
>"fake" pesticide and often use too much in order to compensate.
Since the natives (aka mainland Chinese) are the biggest consumers of
locally grown fruits should we expect a big spike in cancer and other
pesticide related illnesses? Since 40 percent of the apple juice
consumed in the US is imported from China should all babies and
children stop drinking applejuice. The US applejuice marketeers do
not identify the origin of their products. Since you don;t import
applejuice to dump it presumably there will be a lot of US people who
will be poisoned by pesticides, ergo a spike that should show up
somewhere soon.
I didn't make up the story about prewrapping the apple buds to mature
the apples in. I was as astonished as anyone when I saw that TV
report. But read the story below.
Note: The cost of pesticides will be way to expensive to make apple
growing uneconomical. In view of the report that apples are so
plentiful and the price so low that apples are left to rot on the
ground we can assume that the hand pollination and paper bag technique
won't be used. But I have seen China origin apples in paper wrapper
bags that could not have possibly been wrapped after harvesting. I
don't eat apples. For some reason it induces a thick lump of phlegm
in my throat and even a mild gagging reflex.
============================
Export Apple of China's Eye Is, er, Apples
DAVID BARBOZA / NY Times 4apr03
http://www.mindfully.org/Farm/2003/China-Export-Apple4apr03.htm
XIAN, China — This is where much of America's apple juice now comes
from — the outskirts of historic Xian, where the orchards stretch for
miles and miles. Apples are so plentiful here that they are often left
to rot in the fields. They are scattered on the ground in old farming
villages and pitched against walls by playful little boys like red and
gold baseballs.
There are so many apples in China — which over the last two decades
turned itself into the world's biggest apple grower — that the world
price for apple juice concentrate has been depressed for nearly five
years. Apple juice makers in the United States purchase more of
China's cheap concentrate every year — though they do not like to talk
about it — and every year American apple growers complain of
devastating losses.
But do not expect growers in Xian, or any other part of China, to
abandon their apple orchards.
"Yeah, prices are low, but I'm sticking with my apples," says Wang
Aimin, a 40-year-old grower in Lining, a village about 40 miles
northwest of Xian. "Life is better now. I used to grow corn and wheat,
but you couldn't live on that."
These are the economics of modern agriculture in China — and the
market psychology of the modern Chinese farmer. Even a deeply
depressed market is preferable to what farmers suffered through for
decades, when they could not expect to make even $1 a day selling
crops to local markets.
After China opened its agriculture to the broader export market in the
1980's, farmers here started growing apples, backed by government
largess. These days, China produces 1.5 billion bushels of apples a
year — about half the world's supply, and nearly seven times the
American production of about 215 million bushels a year.
And China is working to improve the productivity of its relatively
low-yielding orchards. Apples are one of 11 commodities that the
government recently said would get aggressive development over the
next five years.
"There's a potential in the future that they're going to have even
more apples," said John Skorburg, a senior economist at the American
Farm Bureau Federation. "And it's going to put even more pressure on
the apple industry."
For years, American apple growers have complained that China has
dumped apple juice concentrate into the American market at prices
below the cost of production, and the Chinese for years have denied
the charges.
Three years ago, the Department of Commerce and the International
Trade Commission, a United States government agency, ruled in favor of
American apple growers, and Washington imposed duties of up to 52
percent on most apple juice imports from China.
A decision is expected soon on China's appeal of the rulings. In the
meantime, the Chinese share of the American apple juice concentrate
market has jumped from about 1 percent in 1994 to about 16 percent in
2001, while American growers' share has been tumbling.
Nearly all the concentrate pressed at the Tongda Liquan Fruit Juice
and Beverage Company processing plant near Xian is shipped abroad in
giant bacteria-free drums. The concentrate ends up in the United
States, Russia, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Australia and
elsewhere.
"We're selling all this to the export market," said Yang Bingfeng, 40,
the assistant manager, as he passed through a yard of drums ready to
be shipped. "But we think the domestic market has a great potential to
grow."
In January, Congress stepped in to help American growers with $94
million in compensation for losses suffered in 2000, partly because of
rising sales of Chinese apple juice concentrate.
Officials in China, which joined the World Trade Organization in late
2001, say that the American charges smack of trade warfare.
"Since China joined the W.T.O., China will follow all W.T.O.
principles and other relevant trade agreements," the Ministry of
Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation said in a statement issued in
response to questions about the apple dispute. "But China is also
opposed to trade protectionism under the name of antidumping."
It was the Beijing government that fueled the beginnings of China's
apple boom in the late 1980's.
At the time, Chinese apples, small and tasteless, were largely shunned
on the world market. But then China, newly export-minded, began
importing Red and Yellow Delicious apple seedlings, and new techniques
were employed to improve the quality of local varieties like the
Guoguan and the Jinguan.
Soon, farmers started planting huge apple orchards in the central and
northeastern parts of the country, particularly in Shaanxi and
Shandong Provinces, where the yellow soil is rich and deep and the
amount of daylight is optimum for apple growing, according to industry
experts.
By 1997, China had seven million acres under cultivation, and Chinese
apples were being exported to Russia and the Netherlands. Farmers in
the Xian region rejoiced. "We've had some very good years," said Lei
Zhilin, 48, an apple grower in Liquan, a town just north of Xian.
Apple prices, however, have been tumbling in recent years because of
oversupply. Some growers in China have pared back apple acreage to
plant other fruits and vegetables. Yet with improving yields, apple
production has continued to soar, reaching 21 million metric tons in
2002.
Most of that production is for domestic consumption, of both fresh
apples and apple juice; as China grows more affluent, it is becoming
more health conscious.
Still, with yields rising and apple consumption in China relatively
flat, some industry experts say China has begun to throw some of its
big surpluses of fresh fruit onto the world market, as it has with
juice concentrate.
"We already see apples going into Vancouver, and that is close to
home," said Nancy Foster, president of the U.S. Apple Association, a
trade group. "We're concerned about dumping apples as a possibility."
There are certainly more than enough apples in China.
In Lining village, apples are stocked in caves, cellars and long
tunnels ventilated by huge, chimneylike structures that rise high
above the orchards. And the abundance delights the apple growers.
"I made 400 yuan when I planted corn and wheat," Mr. Wang said,
recalling the time in the 1980's before he transformed his one-acre
field into an apple orchard. "Now, I make 5,000 yuan. And in some
years 10,000." (One yuan is worth about 12 cents.) In the best of
times, some apple growers in Lining said they made 50,000 yuan.
Over the last decade, the apple growers have slowly begun to transform
their tiny village of mud houses by building brick homes — people here
call them palaces — with electricity, televisions and three or four
sparsely decorated but well-constructed rooms.
"Look over there," Mr. Wang said, pointing and laughing as he and five
other apple growers pruned trees one recent afternoon. "You see those
houses — those mud houses? That's where we used to live. Look at those
places. Now, look next door. That's the new place."
Wang Shengli, a tall, quiet 42-year-old apple grower who is not
related to Wang Aimin, offered a tour of his home — seven spacious
rooms for him, his wife and four young children. The house cost
200,000 yuan, he said, or about $24,000, noting that the home was
bought during boom times.
Apple growers here expect those times to return. Apple prices will
rise again, they say. And even if they do not, today's depressed apple
market — with its bruised and abandoned apples splattered on the
village grounds — looks quite glorious, compared with what people here
knew before.
"We'll be planting more apples, because there's no other choice," Wang
Shengli said. "We're not going to go back to planting wheat; that's
yesterday's crop."
PaPaPeng
>ides will be way to expensive to make apple
>growing uneconomical. In view of the report that apples are so
>plentiful and the price so low that apples are left to rot on the
>ground we can assume that the hand pollination and paper bag technique
>won't be used. But I have seen China origin apples in paper wrapper
>bags that could not have possibly been wrapped after harvesting.
Spoke too soon. Read a few stories further into a google search.
http://www.extension.iastate.edu/newsrel/2003/nov03/nov0309.html
Excerpt: Inside a Shaanxi orchard, the contrasts with U.S orchards are
striking. Chinese farmers usually grow additional crops, such as chili
peppers or edible soybeans, between the tree rows in young orchards.
The rows of trees are spaced so tightly that machinery can't drive
between them, so pesticide sprayers are pulled through the orchard by
hand. Shaanxi orchards are devoted to a single apple variety, Fuji.
With its sweet taste and crisp texture, it is preferred by Asian
consumers.
Fruit bagging is even more eye-catching. When it's no bigger than a
blueberry, each apple is enclosed in a two-layer plastic bag. The
opaque outer bag comes off a few weeks before harvest, allowing the
apple peel to darken to its proper color. The inner bag is discarded
at harvest.
The beauty of the bags is in what they keep out - insects and
diseases, resulting in picture-perfect apples.
You won't see plastic bags on apples in American orchards. The reason
is that our labor costs are astronomical compared to China's.
shinypenny
> "I made 400 yuan when I planted corn and wheat," Mr. Wang said,
> recalling the time in the 1980's before he transformed his one-acre
> field into an apple orchard. "Now, I make 5,000 yuan. And in some
> years 10,000." (One yuan is worth about 12 cents.) In the best of
> times, some apple growers in Lining said they made 50,000 yuan.
Heh. Corn and wheat have long been subsidized by the U.S. gov't. We
could easily be accused of dumping our surplus for cheap on the rest
of the world.
So the chinese have learned to play our own game, but with fruit
instead of carbs. Good for them.
jen
PaPaPeng
There are no farm subsidies in China. Back in the late 70s the farm
liberalization policy consisted of setting a modest production quota
for each farm to be paid to the government. Anyything the farm grows
beyond this government quota is theirs to sell at any price they can
fetch and the proceeds kept by them. The set free market forces that
not only produced a food surplus for the first time in many decades
but it also enriched the peasants. That caused a problem with the
stagnant wage city dwellers. The situation is now reversed where city
workers with industrial and service jobs earn more than the
countryside. Lots of interesting economic development stories here.
The Chinese government does promote apple growing and agriculture in
general but no subsidies. As the reports show growing apples is
several orders of magnitude more profitable than growing grain, and a
lot less backbreaking too. In China is anything makes money everybody
rushes in to do the same.* So many went into apples that there is now
a surplus and a price slump. But it is still better than growing
grain so we won't see any relief of apple surpluses soon. Not unless
another hot fruit crop turns up. I see this potential as in
vineyards. Grapes not sold as fresh food can be turned into rasins
and wine. Already vinters of niche Ontario Ice Wine are facing ruin
from Chinese "imitation ice wines" that are of course as good and near
impossible to tell the taste difference. (I don't drink alcoholic
beverages.)
* Read "China's Boomtowns" in the June 2007 issue of National
Geographic. Any entrepreuner with a successful idea, say making bra
clips, has a good time only for a year or two. Very soon his
neighbors and his former workers set up their own production
facilities and compete with the pioneer. Whole towns become the
global manufacturing center for metal bra clips, cigarette lighters,
cheap watches, or what have you. The competition and growth is
humongous. No government intervention or subsidy needed.
Jon von Leipzig@mayday.com
<charleymccorm...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Oct 2, 1:31 pm, PaPaPeng <PaPaP...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > On thisapplethingy, do give your theory on how China managed to grow
> > from nothing to its domination in so short a time. That's the OP's
> > question I tried to answer. He and I am certainly very interested in
> > another explanation.
>>The fact that China is developing newer methods to detect pesticides on apples
>>proves the point that they are in use...
Wonder if they're also developing (or copying?) ways to detect
pesticides inside the apples, too.
Systemics (absorbed thru leaves/roots) have been in use for years.
Years ago, Gerbers, to their credit, stopped buying apples
from suppliers who used a potentially harmful class of pesticides
(organophosphates, I think). Even after wasing, peeling, coring,
they still had hig levels of these critters, which were never tested
on children/infants.
Jon von Leipzig@mayday.com
> On Wed, 10 Oct 2007 20:11:33 -0700, shinypenny
>
>
>
> <shinypenny0...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >On Oct 10, 11:09 am, PaPaPeng <PaPaP...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> >> "I made 400 yuan when I planted corn and wheat," Mr. Wang said,
> >> recalling the time in the 1980's before he transformed his one-acre
> >> field into an apple orchard. "Now, I make 5,000 yuan. And in some
> >> years 10,000." (One yuan is worth about 12 cents.) In the best of
> >> times, some apple growers in Lining said they made 50,000 yuan.
>
> >Heh. Corn and wheat have long been subsidized by the U.S. gov't. We
> >could easily be accused of dumping our surplus for cheap on the rest
> >of the world.
>
> >So the chinese have learned to play our own game, but with fruit
> >instead of carbs. Good for them.
>
> >jen
>
>
> Geographic. Any entrepreuner with a successful idea, say making bra
> clips, has a good time only for a year or two. Very soon his
> neighbors and his former workers set up their own production
> facilities and compete with the pioneer. Whole towns become the
> global manufacturing center for metal bra clips, cigarette lighters,
> cheap watches, or what have you. The competition and growth is
> humongous. No government intervention or subsidy needed.
It seems in China there's no need to strain your brain. There's a
booming
business in making copies of other peeps ideas. Think NG mag also
did
a piece on "Copycat Boomtowns" in China??? There's dozens of towns,
even a few provinces specializing in mfging fake goods.For years,
Wenzhou was
noted for copying P&G products. Then there's Kaihua, the "Phillips"
light bulb town.
The entire province of Henan was at one time, the capital of fakery.
If I could, I'd require the US gubmint or buyers of apple concentrate
from China to test a high pct upon arrival.
PaPaPeng
I caught only the last 15 minutes of PBS's "Silence of the Bees"
NATURE. http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/bees/
There is a worldwide dying of bees that are esential for pollination
of fruit crops among other plants. In China the bees and much else in
insecta had disappeared much earlier. Overuse of pesticides is
blamed. The orchard growers faced ruin. They asked the government
what to do. The advice came back that they would have to do the work
of the bees themselves. And so they did. I don't know enough about
pesticide use currently in China to have an opinion. But I believe
now that the negative consequences are known insecticide use is much
more judicous. The consequences of overuse are obvious.
So the government agencies and the farmers came up with this work
around. Pollen is collected and dried for two days. Then a
pollination wand is made from tying a few down feathers to the tip of
a slim bamboo fly rod. The fluff is dipped into a bottle of pollen
and dusted on the (apple) blossoms. The result is the earlier story
on hand wrapped apples while they mature to perfection. Thje PBS
story quotes the government expert as saying that this hand
pollination method is probably not sustainable. One worker can
pollinate 30 trees. Its hard work As peasants grow richer and find
more rewarding work this practice will probably die off in 20 years or
so. My hope is by then they will find the cure for the bees (dying
off) by then.
As for JonLeipzig's innate racism that anything Chinese must be
inferior an toxic the best rebuttal is that hundreds of millions on
this planet prefer to spend their money where the best buys are. They
live pretty happy and untroubled lives. Jon's fears are self induced.
Only Jon can resolve them.