China Agriculture View

Ginger is a well-known spice grown mainly in India, Jamaica and China. Ginger has long been used as a medicinal plant and is cited in ancient Indian, Chinese, Arabic, Greek and Roman sources.It takes its name from the Sanskrit word stringa-vera, which means “with a body like a horn”, as in antlers.

The common usage of ginger is spice for dish. There are several ways of cooking method in China. And the ginger is an important spice for dish. But this is just a role for ginger, what about other functions of ginger?

In Chinese herbal medicine, Sheng-jiang, or fresh ginger, is considered to have very different properties than Gan-jiang, or dried ginger. Gan-jiang is useful for “cold” pain of the stomach and abdomen, diarrhea due to “cold” in the abdomen, cough, and rheumatism, among other uses.

Additionally, fresh ginger is considered in Chinese herbal medicine to have a moderating or detoxifying effect on other more harsh herbs.

Ginger has long been reputed as an antiemetic. The lack of consistency found in some studies of ginger is also found with anti-nausea drugs, arising in part from difficulties measuring subjective symptoms like nausea.

A recent study published in Evidence-based Complementary and Alternative Medicine concluded that ginger protects the gastric mucosa from stress-induced mucosal lesions and inhibits gastric acid secretion, due in part to inhibiting growth of h. pylori as well as offering anti-oxidant protection against gastric damage. This seems to clearly confirm the popular use of ginger in Ayurvedic, eastern, and folk medicine traditions for its medicinal properties.

Yesterday, China’s Heilongjiang sold 12,030 Tcorn in state corn auctions.

The average bidding price stood at 1,534 yuan ($224.6) per tonne, a slight increase from last week’s 1,525 yuan per tonne.

Auctions will continue in the neighbouring provinces of Jilin, Inner Mongolia and Liaoning, closing at 14:37 p.m. (0837 GMT).

China started its destocking efforts on July 21, offering 2 million tonnes of corn and 500,000 tonnes of soybean from its state reserves each week.

This week’s state soybean reserve auction will take place on Wednesday, after the first two rounds failed to attract any bids.

Brazil is to export mini seed potato tubers from Sao Paulo in Brazil to Inner Mongolia in China.

The system developed by the Campinas Agronomy Institute (IAC) in Brazil will be granted to the Agricultural Research Institute in Hulunbeir after meetings set up September 2008 and July this year by IAC researcher José Alberto Caram de Souza Dias.

Instead of conventional export where the whole potato is used, in this case only the shoots of the tubers are used.

Initially, the partnership with China involved the transfer of Dutch varieties of seed potato but for bureaucratic reasons, the Dutch products were replaced by those developed at the IAC, all virus-free and resistant to the main diseases found in Chinese cultivation.

The Chinese government aims to expand potato production which it intends to increase from 4.5 million hectares to 6 million.

The productivity of potato cultivation in China is small with an average crop of 15 tonnes per hectare, while in Brazil 50 tonnes are harvested per hectare with a specialized workforce and favourable production systems. (macauhub)

Chinese recipes are well known for the smell and taste. Pepper as an important seasoning is loved by many people. People in some areas of china like eat pepper, and they can not eat anything without pepper even though.

Sichuan is famous for spicy and hot dish.Sichuan pepper  is native to northern China and is not related to black pepper, which is native to India. This pepper is quite aromatic but not very hot. Before Asian cultures were introduced to chile pepper, Sichuan pepper was used along with ginger to give heat to many dishes. The heat in modern Sichuan cooking comes instead from red chile pepper, introduced to Asia in the 15th century. Sichuan pepper is still called for in many traditional Chinese recipes.

Fufeng county is a chili pepper production base in Shaanxi province. There are about 5,500 ha of red chili peppers planted each year in the county. Balanced fertilization was rarely practiced in the past due to local technicians believing their soils were rich in both phosphorus (P) and potassium (K). They still used 15 mg/kg of P and 100 mg/kg of K as the sufficient critical levels when testing soil nutrients.

It is reported that 5-year fuel-efficient, Guizhou pepper export volume has increased year by year, from 584 tons in 2002 rose to 1058 tons in 2006, an increase of 1.8 times the value in 2002 from the 707,000 U.S. dollars to the growth in 2006 of 1,841,000 U.S. dollars , An increase of 2.6 times the export countries and regions in 2002 from the 11 growth in 2006 to 19.

For the past years, People belive that organic food is more healthy than ordinary food. So They are willing to buy organic food though it cost much more money. But Gill Finethe, the FSA’s director of dietary health, said:”There is no evidence of additional health benefits from eating organic food.”

The controversial findings touched a raw nerve.

Who is right? And even if organic food is no more nutritious than other produce, does that comprehensively torpedo the case for buying it?

The purpose of the FSA study was to clear up the confusion once and for all. Led by Alan Dangour, a public health nutritionist from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, researchers sifted some 50 years of studies into organic food, analysing nutritional reviews of fruit, vegetables, dairy products and meat.

The FSA researchers do acknowledge higher levels of some beneficial nutrients in organic compared with nonorganic foods. In organic vegetables the research recorded 53.7% more beta-carotene — which is believed to help protect against heart disease and cancer — as well as 38.4% more flavonoids, 12.7% more proteins and 11.3% more zinc.

According to a study, organic food on average costs 60% more than ordinary produce. But there are huge variations, depending on the product: it may be as little as 10% more, or as much as three times the price.

China’s decide to buy 1.8 million tonnes of new-crop U.S. soybeans.It shows that the world’s top soy buyer will be active in the market for the next year and the stocks situation could remain tight for the foreseeable future.

Some market watchers have been concerned that the China might curtail its buying on the export market until clearing the reserves it has built up during the past year.

Private exporters reported the sale of 1.9 million tonnes of U.S. soybeans to China, with 1.8 million tonnes for delivery during the 2009/10 marketing year, and 120,000 tonnes for delivery during 2008/09, the U.S. Agriculture Department said on Thursday.

In June of 2008, the USDA reported sales to China of 2.24 million tonnes for the new crop year. China booked 2.092 million tonnes of U.S. soybeans for the new crop year in May of 2007 and 1.752 million tonnes for the new crop year in April 2006.

China’s buying will support soybean prices because it shows demand will be out there even if questions remain about the availability of new-crop supplies.

Tight stocks of soybeans have supported futures prices throughout 2009, even as prices for other agricultural commodities have faltered. The nearby CBOT soybean contract was up more than 15 percent for the year.

U.S. farmers were heavy sellers of soybeans in 2008 as record prices caused them to unload larger-than-usual amounts of newly harvested supplies, leaving them with little left in their storage bins during the past few months.

China’s second round of state corn reserve auctions recorded modest increases in sales in early trade on Tuesday, as traders lamented unattractive prices amid ample spot supply.

Jilin province sold 355,800 tonnes of corn for the second round of state auctions on Tuesday, more than double that of last week, the official National Grain&Oil Trade Centre (NGOTC) said.

Heilongjiang province received bids of 23.69 percent, or 71,100 tonnes, a rise of 17,900 tonnes from the first bidding a week earlier.

Analysts said they expected still tepid buying interest for the second round of corn auctions, citing cheaper spot prices and abundant supplies.

Source: Reuters

After the Chinese Dairy event happend, the whole industry of Chinese dairy had been hit heavily. People rejected all the food that contain dairy that time.The negative growth came to the end in the industry as a whole, finally achieving positive growth.

 However, the situation is turning around in the second half of 2009 with higher milk prices and less excess dairy products.The latest statistics show that from January to April this year, the large-scale dairy enterprises of China produced 5,864,300 tons of dairy products, an increase of 2.67 percent.

The State Council released a new plan for China’s ailing milk industry on November 19. lastt year. Although the guidelines include provisions for financial support from the government, it also contains a fair measure of candid criticism.The Chinese government is encouraging dairy farmers to expand their businesses with subsidies. The Chinese dairy industry is expected to see a real turning point in September.After the melamine scandal, the Chinese government has taken a series of measures to regulate and standardize Chinese dairy industry to ensure that the dairy source quality is safe for processing, and that manufacturing is stringently checked for quality.

With efforts of the government and all  the people who are in dairy industry,We belive the chinese dairy must turn around.