"I studied to be a farmer!”
After graduating from university, Ma Tiemin, a young man from Shandong, borrowed money from relatives and friends in order to grow vegetables, and sold his wedding house, so as to raise enough start-up capital for his business. He contracted more than 200 acres of vegetable land, planted 7 kinds of vegetables, and began to develop a standardized vegetable planting industry.
However, this road is extremely difficult, "6 out of 7 vegetables are not profitable!".But he did not give up, grabbed the only profitable lettuce, expanded the planting area all the way, and constantly looked for sales, and finally won 60% of the market share of lettuce in China by many international catering giants, and occupied 50% of the lettuce import market in South Korea and 90% in Singapore.
WeChat***Kaisheng Haofeng Group.
Ma Tiemin "stubbornly" planted vegetables. In addition to standardization, he also researched digital technology, invested in the construction of smart greenhouse projects, built agricultural brands, and made many vegetables famous. Among them, the "one big" brand tomato has been hot in the market since it was listed.
20 years have passed, and Ma Tiemin is still happy to grow vegetables. He calls himself a "new farmer", but the growing kingdom of vegetables is not his ultimate goal, "yield does not equal efficiency, technology can bring high quality".
In the future, he wants farmers to become workers in the modern agricultural industry and become "new farmers".
Sell your house and start a business to grow vegetables
Speaking of the relationship between Ma Tiemin and growing vegetables, we have to go back to more than 20 years ago.
In 1999, after graduating from university, he went to work in a foreign-funded vegetable enterprise engaged in agriculture and agricultural trade in Qingdao. Foreign-funded enterprises provide seeds to cooperative farmers, require standardized planting, and purchase only after the products are qualified.
In those years, the concept of modern agricultural standardization of foreign-funded enterprises has made Ma Tiemin's understanding of agriculture "subversive".
For example, many farmers will directly sprinkle chicken manure and pig manure into the ground, thinking that this is organic biofertilizer, which is good for agriculture. However, high standards of modern agriculture require that the land be "clean", believing that untreated animal manure may contain pathogenic bacteria and heavy metals, causing pollution to agricultural products.
Later, the company had to move overseas due to improper management. Ma Tiemin quit his job, sold his wedding house, borrowed some money, scraped together 400,000 yuan, and embarked on the road of growing vegetables and starting a business.
He contracted more than 200 acres of land and introduced 7 vegetable varieties such as green beans, broccoli, lettuce and white radish, and planted them according to international standards.
But when it came to the harvest season, Ma Tiemin panicked. At that time, because of the "SARS" epidemic, the customers who had contacted before refused to come to buy, and the vegetables were unsalable. He had to transport the vegetables to the local market to sell, but the people at that time ignored the concept of "high-standard planting" and his vegetables could not be sold.
In desperation, Ma Tiemin learned that a former colleague was in charge of purchasing lettuce for KFC in Shanghai, so he invited the other party to come and see.
Become the "King of Asian Lettuce".
The selection of the best business by the international catering giant is quite strict. A former colleague in charge of lettuce procurement, after inspecting lettuce, found that its quality met the procurement standards, and the lettuce had a higher yield than other ** merchants. In the end, more than 100 tons of lettuce planted by Ma Tiemin were all purchased by the other party.
Knotted lettuce became the only profitable variety at the time, and he decided to grow only lettuce. Because lettuce is grown in the open air and cannot be done all year round, the top businessmen of international catering giants need to go to all parts of the country to purchase lettuce in different regions in different seasons. Ma Tiemin thought of expanding the scale of lettuce cultivation.
Just do it!He is looking for lettuce planting sites across the country, building a base on the dam at an altitude of more than 1,000 meters in Zhangjiakou, Hebei Province, and a production base in Fujian to ensure lettuce in summer and winter
is different from the traditional "relying on the sky to eat", Ma Tiemin is stubborn. From the beginning of seed selection, he tests the seeds for their resistance to cold and heat. Later, he simply lived in a shack next to the vegetable field, wrote down various data on the growth of lettuce, and studied the planting and harvesting process of different varieties of lettuce in different regions. It is necessary to ensure both yield and quality.
WeChat***Kaisheng Haofeng Group.
By using standards to do agriculture, he has made a name for himself in the industry, and more and more buyers know about his lettuce.
Ma Tiemin's enterprise has entered the fast lane of development. His lettuce has not only won 60% of the lettuce market share of many international catering giants in China, but also become a partner of dozens of Fortune 500 companies in China. His lettuce is exported to more than 20 countries and regions such as the United Arab Emirates, the Netherlands, India, and Japan.
Relying on a small ball lettuce, Ma Tiemin has achieved the first place in Asia in terms of output and planting technology, and the first in the country in terms of R&D level, production scale and annual export volume.
Use technology to get rid of "relying on the sky to eat".
Ma Tiemin is happy to grow vegetables on the road. In his view, to treat agriculture as an industry and develop modern agriculture, the first thing is to standardize.
He went abroad to study Xi agriculture and discovered the glass smart greenhouse. The smart greenhouse system can achieve precise control and management of the plant growth environment. After that, he invested in the construction of a smart greenhouse project for seedling breeding and greenhouse cultivation of new varieties, solving the safety problem of vegetable planting and increasing the net yield per unit area.
WeChat***Kaisheng Haofeng Group.
He also added digitalization to the smart greenhouse, introduced cloud computing, big data and artificial intelligence as one of the "agricultural brain", and used the digital system to turn agricultural management into transmitted data and develop digital smart agriculture.
Moving vegetable planting to the "cloud", Ma Tiemin's road to modern agricultural industry has become more colorful. He also created the famous "One Big" boutique tomato brand.
A long time ago, he found that there was a problem with tomatoes, bell peppers, cucumbers and other vegetables, "they all have to be grown in greenhouses, and the tomatoes ripen in different seasons in many places." In order to increase the yield of tomatoes, people use a large amount of chicken manure, pig manure, etc. as fertilizer, and use hormones to pollinate the flowers." In addition, fungicides are used more, and the hormones, fungicides and heavy metals in tomatoes are easy to exceed the standard.
As a result, he built smart greenhouses in 17 cities across the country. The tomatoes in the smart greenhouse are planted through standardized management and digital technology, and the yield is 4-5 times that of ordinary greenhouse tomatoes.
Each base of tomatoes is from a few.
Ten or hundreds of varieties are selected, and finally a few suitable varieties are selected. After seven or eight years, further through repurchase and other data, everyone's favorite varieties are screened out for planting. Ma Tiemin said.
Selected varieties, such as large pink fruits, small cherry tomatoes, and medium-sized red tomatoes, taste better than some varieties in terms of aroma, moisture, sugar content, sweetness and acidity.
"I read bad reviews every day".
How to make a good brand by growing vegetables?Ma Tiemin continued to "stumble".
The company adopted the route of "pricing + quantity + brand" and launched the "Green Walker" brand, which gained stable buyers in the industry.
Earlier, there were very few people who bought vegetables on the website. He recalled, "At that time, there was no place to learn Xi experience of vegetable e-commerce, and there was no special department to dock such (tomato) products." ”
Later, the environment changed, and there was a special vegetable department on the platform, and it became the norm for consumers to buy vegetables on the platform. He found that if you want to develop your brand, you need to rely on service and quality to win the trust of consumers.
"My view is that we don't look at good reviews, we only look at bad reviews. Every day, we look at what our customers are not happy with. Gradually, reading complaints and bad reviews has become an important job for Ma Tiemin.
What's the question of the top customer?Which type of product are you not satisfied with?Our question is in**?Ma Tiemin said: "We don't care what he complains about, as long as the customer is not satisfied, we have to study it every day." ”
Earlier, the most common complaints from customers were soft tomatoes, crushed on the way, juice leakage, mold and mildew after receipt. As soon as there was a problem, he began to think of a way, either to change the packaging or to analyze the maturity of the picking, and solve the problems one by one.
In the summer, the weather is hot, and some customers are not satisfied, saying that the tomatoes they bought back are hard. "The temperature is too high during transportation, and the tomatoes tend to soften, so they pick them earlier and have to wait a few days before they reach the customer. I told the team to manage it more granularly. ”
Under the concept of "bad review oriented" and "refinement", the products have gained a lot of fans, and the brand's fame is also increasing day by day.
Yield is not equal to benefit, quality brings benefit
20 years ago, when the wedding house was sold at the beginning of the business, many people did not understand Ma Tiemin's choice to grow vegetables. After all, in those days, escaping the countryside and land and going to the city to do business and work was the "bright future" in the eyes of most people.
Today, his company relies on growing vegetables with annual sales of nearly 1 billion yuan, and many relatives and friends around him have changed their views on growing vegetables.
But Ma Tiemin, who "broke out", found that many people still have misunderstandings about agriculture. For example, do farmers need technology, and is it better to plant small-scale or large-scale?
He said that the sales of agricultural products are first-class-oriented. In terms of production, it is quality-oriented. For a long time, the homogenization of farmers at the planting end is more serious, and it is yield-oriented, "but yield is not equal to efficiency".
If we start from the cultivation methods, technology and market demand of varieties to help farmers grow and sell well, although the output may not necessarily increase, the income will increase. ”
At present, in the cultivation of potatoes, onions, baby cabbage and cabbage, Ma Tiemin carries out standardized management through cooperation with farmers, provides farmers with seeds, guides seedlings, fertilizers, watering, etc., and provides post-harvest treatment guidance.
He cooperates with large households, and the income of one acre of land is also increasing. For example, in the past, planting potatoes could earn 2,000 yuan per acre, but under scientific planting, it could be increased to 3,000 yuan.
Farmers who know how to put technology into productivity, coupled with basic management, can achieve higher production efficiency, not just yield. Smart technology can bring high quality, not only to make fruits and vegetables tastier, but also to turn farmers into workers in modern agriculture.
Ma Tiemin expects his vegetable business to grow by more than 50 percent this year.
But his dream of growing vegetables is far from the sales figures.
WeChat***Kaisheng Haofeng Group.
He insists on doing smart agriculture and researching science and technology to grow vegetables. He plans to build 100 smart greenhouses across the country by 2025 and become the world's largest glass smart greenhouse operatorBy 2030, 1,000 smart greenhouses will be built around the world, so that more farmers can transform into professional industrial workers.